THE  LIBRARY 

OF 

THE  UNIVERSITY 

OF  CALIFORNIA 

LOS  ANGELES 


GIFT  OF 

Kenneth  Maogowan 


h 


THE  CONTEMPORARY  DRAMA 
OF  ENGLAND 


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THE  CONTEMPORARY  DRAMA  SERIES 

Edited  by  Richard  Burton 

THE 

CONTEMPORARY  DRAMA 

OF  ENGLAND 

BT 

THOMAS  H.  DICKINSON 


Won- REFER? 


cQWYAD-aHS 


BOSTON 

LITTLE,  BROWN,  ANP  COMPANY 

1917 


Copyright,  1917, 
Bt  Little,  Browk,  and  Compant. 


All  rights  reserved 
Published,  February,  1917 


XoTinoott  $n«0 

Set  up  and  electrotyped  by  J.  S.  Gushing  Co.,  Norwood,  Mass.,  U.S.A. 

Prcsswork  by  S.  J.  Parkhill  &  Co.,  Boston,  Mass.,  U.S.A. 


Librai-2 

Tie. 


CONTENTS 


I  The  Early  Victorian  Theatre        ...  1 

II  The  Decline  of  the  Romantic  Tradition     •  14 

III  Adaptation  and  Experiment     ....  30 

IV  Toward  a  New  English  Theatre    ...  49 
V  Dramatists  of  Transition         ....  68 

VI    Henry  Arthur  Jones 90 

VII    Arthur  Wing  Pinero 108 

Vin    The  Busy  Nineties 133 

IX    New  Organization 154 

X    George  Bernard  Shaw 176 

XI  Dramatists  of  the  Free  Theatrk          .        .  205 

Xn  The  Challenge  of  the  Future        .        .        .  225 

Bibliographical  Appendix         ....  241 

Index 283 


572837 


THE  CONTEMPORARY  DRAMA 
OF  ENGLAND 

CHAPTER  I 

The  Early  Victorian  Theatre 

It  has  been  the  fate  of  the  theatre  that  gave  to  the 
world  the  first  dramatist  of  modern  tunes  to  rest  always 
under  the  imputation  of  failure.  Sidney,  Addison, 
and  Goldsmith,  separate  in  time,  are  one  in  deploring 
the  low  state  of  the  theatre.  When  we  come  into  the 
nineteenth  century  we  find  Byron,  surveying  the  non- 
sense, the  puns,  the  mummeries  of  the  German  schools 
of  English  drama,  exclaiming : 

Who  but  must  mourn,  while  these  are  all  the  rage 
The  degradation  of  oiu*  vaunted  stage. 

A  score  of  years  later,  in  1829,  Carlyle  writes,  "Nay, 
do  not  we  English  hear  daily,  for  the  last  twenty 
years,  that  the  Drama  is  dead,  or  in  a  state  of  suspended 
animation;  and  are  not  medical  men  sitting  on  the 
case,  and  propounding  their  remedial  appliances, 
weekly,  monthly,  quarterly,  to  no  manner  of  purpose  ?" 

1 


2   THE  CONTEMPORARY  DRAMA  OP  ENGLAND 

From  Carlyle's  time  to  our  own  the  English  theatre 
has  existed  under  a  universal  censure.  And  yet  the 
theatre  has  been  as  active  as  any  other  institution  of 
the  nation.  The  year  that  brought  Victoria  to  the 
throne  brought  Macready  into  control  of  a  company 
that  was  to  stand  as  the  last  support  of  the  poetic 
drama.  That  year  saw  the  production  of  the  first 
plays  of  Lytton  and  Robert  Browning.  During  the 
reign  of  the  great  queen,  Macready,  Boucicault,  Charles 
Kean,  Phelps,  the  Bancrofts,  Robertson,  Gilbert,  and 
Irving  rose  and  made  their  contributions  to  English 
theatrical  history.  Before  she  passed  away,  Sydney 
Grundy,  Henry  Arthur  Jones,  and  Arthur  Wing  Pinero 
had  adapted  to  England  movements  that  had  attained 
a  vogue  on  the  Continent,  and  in  social  structure  there 
had  been  a  complete  revolution  in  theatrical  art. 

The  first  theatrical  problem  to  be  attacked  during 
the  reign  of  Queen  Victoria  was  the  problem  of  mo- 
nopoly. The  monopoly  of  the  patent  houses,  Covent 
Garden  and  Drury  Lane,  over  the  right  to  produce  the 
English  masterpieces  of  the  stage,  goes  back  to  the  re- 
opening of  the  theatres  under  Charles  II.  In  1843 
there  was  passed  the  remedial  act  by  which  from  this 
time  forward  all  regular  theatres  in  England  were 
placed  upon  a  parity  before  the  government.  This 
Act  of  1843  was  the  last  word  in  a  chapter  of  par- 
liamentary activity  which  had  gone  back  to  1832  when 
Edward  Bulwer-Lytton,  then  a  new  member  of  Parlia- 
ment, had  moved  to  raise  the  disabilities  under  which 
the  unlicensed  theatres  suffered  in  comparison  with 
the  Drury  Lane  and  Covent  Garden  and  Haymarket 


THE   EARLY  VICTORIAN  THEATRE  3 

theatres.  This  chapter  itself  was  but  the  concluding 
passage  in  a  history  covering  one  hundred  and  seventy- 
five  years,  in  which  more  and  more  vigorous  struggles 
had  been  made  by  unlicensed  theatres  against  the  mo- 
nopolies of  the  patentees. 

The  situation  of  the  theatre  before  the  correcting 
Act  may  best  be  shown  by  distinguishing  between 
its  legal  and  actual  status.  Before  1843  only  three 
theatres  in  England  were  legally  empowered  to  play 
the  legitimate  national  drama,  Shakespeare,  Beaumont 
and  Fletcher,  Congreve,  Otway,  and  others  of  the  old 
dramatists.  These  theatres  were  Drury  Lane  and 
Covent  Garden,  which  existed  by  patent  granted  by 
Charles  II  at  the  opening  of  the  theatres  in  1662,  and 
the  Little  Theatre  in  the  Haymarket  which  lived  under 
a  renewable  license,  first  granted  in  1766  to  Samuel 
Foote.  These  theatres  were  known  as  the  majors.  As 
they  had  a  monopoly  of  legitimate  plays,  all  other 
theatres,  known  as  minors,  were  limited  to  concerts, 
farces,  and  variety  entertainments.  Serious  efforts 
were  made  by  law  to  distinguish  between  the  legitimate 
play  and  the  play  to  be  produced  by  minors,  and  it  was 
finally  decreed  that  plays  for  the  minors  should  be  only 
those  plays  that  had  musical  accompaniment. 

In  its  main  principles  the  law  was  clear  enough,  but 
facts  continued  to  develop  to  make  difficult  the  admin- 
istration of  the  law.  The  patent  theatres  had  been 
established  by  Charles  II  in  a  city  of  less  than  two 
hundred  thousand  inhabitants.  By  the  beginning  of 
the  nineteenth  century  London  had  grown  to  be  a  city 
of  almost  a  million.    To  meet  the  new  demands  of  the 


4   THE  CONTEMPORARY  DRAMA  OF  ENGLAND 

audience,  the  managers  enlarged  their  theatres  to  such 
a  size  that  only  great  productions  could  be  staged  in 
them.  Meanwhile  the  minor  theatres  were  growing 
to  great  popularity.  These  theatres  had  developed 
from  the  amusement  taverns  of  the  eighteenth  century, 
in  the  East  End  and  in  the  outskirts,  from  Vauxhall 
and  Marylebone  Gardens,  from  Astleys  and  the  Surrey 
Gardens.  As  their  patronage  grew  they  were  improved  ; 
the  Olympic  and  the  Adelphi  of  the  early  nineteenth 
century  were  as  well  appointed  as  the  patent  theatres. 
At  first  these  theatres  limited  themselves  to  concerts, 
pantomimes,  burlettas,  and  animal  shows.  The  next 
step  is  the  exchange  of  entertainments  between  the 
two  classes  of  houses,  the  patent  theatres  borrowing  the 
burlettas  and  animal  shows  of  the  minors  and  presenting 
them  between  the  acts  of  their  legitimate  plays,  and 
the  minors  in  retaliation  presenting  Shakespeare  and 
high  comedy. 

Under  such  conditions  the  protected  theatre  sank 
lower,  and  the  popular  theatre  improved  in  standing, 
Though  working  under  great  handicaps  the  minor 
theatres  managed  to  supply  some  good  productions, 
to  produce  some  good  actors  and  many  playwrights. 
The  patent  theatres  were  impoverished  by  legal  battles 
and  large  productions.  The  most  serious  result  of  the 
situation  was  that  it  was  a  breeder  of  chaos.  Between 
the  spectacular  drama  of  the  patent  theatres  and  the 
new  domestic  strains  of  the  better  minors,  the  true 
legitimate  play  fell  to  the  ground.  The  business  of 
the  theatre  was  involved  in  subterfuges  and  jealousies. 
There  was  destroyed  the  respect  the  citizens  should 


THE   EARLY  VICTORIAN  THEATRE  5 

have  for  the  national  institution  of  the  theatre  and  for 
the  traditions  of  the  legitimate  stage.  From  these 
days  two  movements  stand  out,  the  death  of  the  old 
romantic  tradition  and  the  rise  of  a  popular  theatre. 

A  condition  had  been  reached  that  no  Parliamentary 
action  alone  could  correct.  In  1843  Parliament  passed 
the  act  for  the  freeing  of  the  theatres.  Instead  of  a 
chaos  of  subterfuges  there  now  followed  the  chaos  of 
new-found  liberty.  Within  two  years  after  1843  the 
companies  of  the  two  great  theatres  were  scattered 
through  the  minor  theatres.  In  suddenly  liberating 
the  theatres  without  giving  any  support  to  the  better 
standards  of  the  nation's  drama  the  English  Parliament 
showed  the  same  disregard  for  dramatic  art  that  had 
been  shown  in  continuing  the  patents.  Here  was 
an  opportunity  permanently  to  establish  the  national 
theatre  as  a  guardian  of  tradition  and  a  school  of  the  art. 
No  such  thing  was  done.  All  the  theatres  were  put 
upon  the  same  plane,  to  fight  the  battle  of  life  or  death 
with  such  weapons  as  they  had.  Comedy  and  poetic 
drama  were  thrown  into  the  arena  with  vaudevilles  and 
burlesques.  The  only  interest  the  crown  retained  in 
drama  was  in  a  continuance  of  a  hampering  control. 
Music  halls  were  compelled  still  to  live  under  the  gen- 
eral classification  of  disorderly  places.  The  censorship 
of  the  Lord  Chamberlain  was  reaffirmed  and  strength- 
ened. Some  of  the  immediate  results  are  indicated  by 
a  writer  in  the  Quarterly  Review  for  January,  1872. 
*'  Companies  became  of  necessity  broken  up ;  actors 
who  by  time  and  practice  might  have  been  tutored 
into  excellence,  were  ruined  by  being  lifted  into  positions 


6   THE  CONTEMPORARY  DRAMA  OF  ENGLAND 

far  beyond  their  powers;  every  player  became  a  law 
to  himself ;  the  traditions  of  the  art  were  lost,  the  dis- 
cipline which  distinguished  the  old  theatres  was  broken 
down." 

In  1844  J.  R.  Planch6  wrote  for  the  Haymarket  a 
topical  piece  called  The  Drama  at  Home  in  which  the 
following  lines  occur : 

Portia.     I  say  you're  free  to  act  where'er  you  please, 
no  longer  pinioned  by  the  patentees. 

****** 

Drama.    O  joyful  day  I    Then  I  may  flourish  still ! 

Punch.     May  —  well,  that's  something. 
Let  us  hope  you  will. 

A  stage  may  rise  for  you  now  law  will  let  it, 
And  Punch  sincerely  wishes  you  may  get  it. 

But  a  stage  did  not  arise.  There  followed  for 
twenty  years  a  period  of  stagnation  in  the  theatre. 
From  the  opening  of  the  Princess's  Theatre  in  1841 
until  1866  no  new  theatre  was  built  in  London.  Co- 
vent  Garden  theatre  was  burned  in  1856  and  when 
rebuilt  went  over  to  opera.  Macready  retired  in  1849. 
Only  Phelps  and  Kean  were  successful  in  Shakespeare's 
plays,  the  latter  by  a  strong  application  of  pictorial 
elements.  The  state  of  actors  and  playwrights  was 
not  improved.  The  collapse  of  the  circuit  system, 
which  was  to  be  followed  in  the  sixties  by  the  new 
centralized  system,  was  accompanied  by  much  suffering 
on  the  part  of  actors  and  authors.  No  longer  were 
Norwich,  Bristol,  Bath,  Lincoln,  York  to  maintain  their 
circuits  of  stock  actors  from  whom  might  come  the 
future  stars  of  the  metropolis.    Pending  the  change  to 


THE   EARLY  VICTORIAN  THEATRE  7 

a  better  business  system,  the  careers  of  actors  and  au- 
thors were  not  happy.  "School  mistresses  and  gov- 
ernesses, shop-girls,  dress-makers,  cooks,  housemaids 
—  what  are  your  fatigues  to  those  of  an  actress?" 
writes  T.  W.  Robertson.  Authors  were  no  better  off. 
No  stage  writer  of  this  time  could  afford  to  live  by  com- 
position alone.  Knowles  had  been  teacher,  preacher, 
and  maker  of  dictionaries,  as  well  as  dramatic  author. 
Douglas  Jerrold  was  engaged  as  dramatic  author  at 
five  pounds  a  week  and  received  seventy  pounds  for 
Black-eyed  Susan.  Dion  Boucicault  tells  us  that,  as 
it  was  cheaper  for  a  manager  to  buy  a  translation  at 
fifty  pounds  than  a  new  play  at  two  hundred  and  fifty, 
the  theatre  was  served  by  impoverished  hacks  and 
translators. 

The  low  state  of  the  theatre  was  reflected  in  popular 
estimation.  In  1832  a  Parliamentary  committee  re;_^ 
ported  that  it  had  found  a  considerable  decline  in^ 
the  "taste  of  the  public  for  theatrical  performances." 
This  low  standard  was  representative  of  all  classes. 
At  the  time  that  Macready  was  making  his  first  venture 
at  Covent  Garden  in  classical  tragedy  Queen  Victoria 
was  supporting  with  her  repeated  attendance  the 
zoological  shows  at  Drury  Lane.  The  attitude  of 
artists,  critics,  and  men  of  letters  toward  the  theatre 
was  either  repugnant  or  patronizing.  Carlyle  looked 
upon  the  stage  as  a  thing  of  tricks,  attempting  to  do 
by  mechanical  means  what  could  only  be  done  by  poetic 
genius.  Other  writers  surrendered  their  taste  abso- 
lutely upon  entering  a  playhouse.  Ruskin  could  admire 
anything,  even  the  Claudian  of  W.  G.  Wills.    Dickens* 


8   THE  CONTEMPORARY  DRAMA  OF  ENGLAND 

experiments  in  playwriting  are  notorious.  The  story 
is  told  of  Thackeray  that,  going  to  the  theatre  with 
Edward  FitzGerald,  the  latter  was  so  bored  that  he 
wanted  to  go  home,  but  Thackeray  shouted  "  By  God  ! 
Isn't  that  splendid."  The  zeal  for  social  reform  of  the 
mid-century,  for  Chartism,  for  University  Extension, 
for  Christian  settlements  had  not  yet  found  the  social 
key  to  better  public  amusement. 

For  such  conditions  the  plays  of  the  first  half  of  the 
Victorian  reign  were  written.  What  were  the  general 
classes  of  plays  to  which  the  audiences  gave  their  sup- 
port? Three  conditions  govern  all  kinds  of  plays. 
First.  Romanticism,  though  past  its  prime,  continues 
to  supply  the  motives  as  well  as  the  formulas  and 
characters  of  plays  both  prose  and  verse.  Second.  The 
common  interests  of  experience  begin  to  elbow  out 
the  ideal  interests  of  the  imagination.  Third.  There 
begins  again  an  increasing  tuition  to  the  schools  of 
playwriting  in  France. 

Under  these  three  conditions  six  types  of  plays 
flourish  in  the  theatre  from  1840-1865. 

1.  Verse  Plays.  A  few  of  these  were  based  upon  the 
classic  tradition  of  Greek  and  French  tragedy,  but  the 
great  majority  follow  the  models  of  Elizabethan  tragedy 
and  comedy. 

2.  Melodrama.  These  plays  began  in  the  minor 
houses  with  German  melodrama  of  the  Kotzebue  school. 
In  the  second  quarter  of  the  century  there  came  his- 
torical melodramas  from  France  as  an  offshoot  of  the 
romantic  movement.  These  found  place  on  the  stages 
of  the  great  theatres. 


THE   EARLY  VICTORIAN  THEATRE  9 

3.  Burlesque  and  Extravaganza.  Opera,  which  had 
developed  in  the  eighteenth  century  out  of  Italian 
models,  joined  with  the  burletta  of  the  minor  theatres 
to  create  burlesque.  As  this  grew  in  popularity  it 
added  spectacular  elements  and  became  the  fairy  play 
and  the  extravaganza. 

4.  Domestic  Drama.  The  place  of  serious  drama  is 
now  largely  taken  by  the  domestic  play  of  the  middle 
classes.  This  play  traced  its  source  to  the  realistic 
tragedy  and  domestic  comedy  of  the  eighteenth  century. 
To  this  class  belong  rural  plays,  nautical  plays,  and 
racing  plays. 

5.  High  Comedy.  With  the  growth  of  popular  inter- 
est in  domestic  themes  and  in  sensational  display  high 
comedy  declined  in  vogue.  High  comedy  was  to  come 
again,  debased  indeed,  in  the  translations  and  adapta- 
tions of  Scribe's  well-made  plays. 

6.  Farce.  Taking  the  place  of  high  comedy  we 
now  find  the  one-act  farce  played  as  a  curtain  raiser 
at  the  great  theatres,  or  as  a  variety  at  the  music 
halls.  In  the  seventies  the  farce  was  expanded  to 
three  acts. 

In  the  vogue  of  burlesque  may  be  found  the  one  sign 
of  health  in  the  early  Victorian  theatre.  Of  all  the 
orders  mentioned  burlesque  is  the  form  that  expresses 
most  directly  a  reaction  to  the  life  and  art  of  the  day. 
Historically  the  burlesque  motive  goes  back  to  the 
beginnings  of  opera  in  England.  Gay's  Beggar's  Opera, 
presented  at  Lincoln's  Inn  Fields,  a  minor  theatre,  in 
1727,  was  "written  in  ridicule  of  the  musical  Italian 
drama."    The  burletta  (from  Italian  burlare,  meaning 


10  THE  CONTEMPORARY  DRAMA  OF  ENGLAND 

to  mock,  to  banter,  to  jest)  was  the  form  of  entertain- 
ment expressly  sanctioned  by  the  Act  of  25  George  II 
permitting  the  licensing  of  musical  performances  in 
minor  theatres.  When  it  was  introduced  into  the 
Marylebone  Gardens  it  became  so  popular  as  to  threaten 
legitimate  drama. 

Superficial  as  were  the  burlesques,  they  were  unique 
in  that  they  had  in  them  some  elements  of  social  and 
art  commentary.  The  vogue  of  burlesque  represented 
the  desire  on  the  part  of  men  to  amuse  themselves 
while  still  retaining  their  judgment.  Men  were  ready 
to  laugh  at  their  own  extravagances,  to  turn  things 
around  and  view  the  fixed  order  in  a  topsy-turvy 
mirror.  While  a  large  part  of  the  stage  was  dominated 
by  sham  sentiment,  sensationalism,  melodrama,  these 
plays  ridiculed  the  pompous  and  sued  for  mirth. 
Herein  lies  the  justification  of  the  hundreds  of  bur- 
lesques that  from  the  youth  of  Planche  to  the  time  of 
Gilbert  crowded  the  stages. 

The  main  characteristic  of  burlesque  is  that  it  ridi- 
cules by  exaggeration  the  theme  of  a  work  of  art  or 
of  a  custom.  Thus  burlesque  refers  either  to  a  play 
or  a  book,  a  man  or  a  group  of  men.  But  usually  these 
are  struck  either  through  their  pretensions  or  their 
lofty  emotion.  The  great  mass  of  nineteenth-century 
burlesque  attaches  itself  to  the  stories  that  had  become 
threadbare  in  romantic  fiction  and  on  the  stage.  The 
stories  of  Faust  and  Marguerite,  Sappho,  Antony  and 
Cleopatra,  Dido,  Robin  Hood,  Orlando  Furioso,  and  the 
plays  of  Shakespeare  were  parodied.  The  primary 
rule  of  burlesque  was  the  first  rule  of  paradox :  find  the 


THE   EARLY  VICTORIAN  THEATRE  11 

revered  thing  and  laugh  at  it ;  find  the  accepted  thing 
and  deny  it.  Mythology  was  violated,  and  probability 
inverted.  Men  played  women,  and  women,  men. 
Cowards  played  hero,  and  great  warriors  turned  cow- 
ards. All  this  was  delivered  in  bad  verse,  with  multi- 
tudes of  puns,  and  to  the  accompaniment  of  songs  and 
dances  and  with  irrepressible  animal  spirits.  Many  of 
the  early  burlesques  were  not  signed.  The  chief  later_ 
writers  of  burlesques  were  Francis  Talfourd,  J.  Palgrave 
Simpson,  F.  C.  Burnand,  John  Brougham,  William 
Brough,  and  H.  J.  Byron. 

Higher  than  the  burlesque  and  no  less  popular  was. 
the  extravaganza.' ^Planch e,  who  was  its  creator,  de- 
scribes this  as  a  "whimsical  treatment  of  a  poetical 
subject  as  distinguished  from  the  broad  caricature  of  a 
tragedy  or  serious  opera,  which  was  correctly  described 
as  burlesque."  The  extravaganza  was  usually  based  _ 
upon  a  fairy  legend  treated  lyrically  and  with  elaborate 
scenic  display  and  ballet  features,  ending  with  a  "  grand 
transformation  scene."  An  early  extravaganza  was 
Planche's  Riquet  with  the  Tuft,  presented  at  the  Olympic 
in  1836.'  To  this  class  belong  the  same  writer's 
Sleeping  Beauty  (1840)  and  The  Golden  Fleece  (1845). 
One  of  the  best  of  the  later  fairy  extravaganzas  was 
Albery's  Oriana  (Globe,  1873),  and  the  height  of 
expense  was  reached  in  Boucicault's  Babil  and  Bijou 
(1872). 

Each  year,  as  Christmas  approached,  the  theatres 
of  London,  both  great  and  small,  prepared  a  Christmas 
pantomime.  This  was  presented  on  Boxing  Day  and 
ran  as  long  as  there  were  audiences  to  see  it.    The 


12  THE  CONTEMPORARY  DRAMA  OF  ENGLAND 

subjects  of  the  pantomime  were  the  fairy  stories  beloved 
of  children  and  grown-ups  —  Robinson  Crusoe,  Beauty 
and  the  Beast,  Little  Red  Riding-Hood,  Bluebeard, 
Sinbad  the  Sailor,  Dick  Whittington  and  his  Cat,  Jack 
the  Giant-Killer.  Planche  outlined  the  conventional 
nursery  tale,  "in  which  the  course  of  true  love  never 
did  run  smooth",  and  the  cross-grained  father,  the 
pretty  daughter  with  two  suitors,  one  wealthy  and  ugly, 
the  other  poor  and  debonair,  at  the  touch  of  a  fairy's 
wand  all  turn  into  the  characters  of  the  Harlequinade, 
and  in  the  end  are  found  in  a  long  pursuit  through  a  dark 
forest.  Thackeray  bears  witness  to  the  popularity  of 
the  pantomime.  "  Very  few  men  in  the  course  of  nature 
can  expect  to  see  all  the  pantomimes  in  one  season  " 
he  writes  in  Round  About  a  Christmas  Tree,  "but  I 
hope  to  the  end  of  my  life  I  shall  never  forego  reading 
about  them  in  that  delicious  sheet  of  the  Times  which 
appears  on  the  morning  after  Boxing  Day." 

The  playwrights  of  that  day  were  bohemians  as  a  rule, 
men  who  knew  the  chances  of  a  precarious  calling,  and 
made  up  for  the  pinch  of  poverty  with  good  spirits. 
Charles  Reade  in  Triplet  in  Peg  Woffington  (dramatized 
by  Reade  and  Taylor  as  Masks  and  Faces)  presents  the 
characteristics  of  a  life  he  has  known,  in  a  character  that 
has  some  resemblance  to  the  actual  Tom  Robertson, 
and  a  life  that  appears  again  faithfully  presented  in 
Pinero's  Trelawney  of  the  "  Wells."  Among  the  early 
Victorian  dramatists  are  Douglas  Jerrold  (1803-1857), 
contributor  to  Punch,  who  was  what  James  Hannay 
calls  a  "humorous  thinker",  author  of  the  long-popular 
Black-eyed  Susan;  or,  AllintheDovms  (IS29);  Edward 


THE   EARLY  VICTORIAN  THEATRE  13 

Fitzball  (1792-1873)  writer  of  nautical  drama  and 
melodrama ;  J.  Maddison  Morton  (1811-1891),  maker 
of  farces  and  vaudevilles  (Lend  Me  Five  Shillings,  Grim- 
shaw  Bagshaw  and  Bradshatv,  Box  and  Cox,  A  Capital 
Match) ;  William  Bayle  Bernard  (1807-1875),  maker  of 
farces  ;  J.  B.  Buckstone  (1802-1879),  writer  of  melo- 
dramas; Mark  Lemon  and  John  Oxenford,  each  the 
author  of  his  scores  of  plays.  Two  men  stand  above 
the  rest.  J.  R.  Planche  (1796-1880)  was  a  maker  of 
spectacles  and  fairy  plays.  His  chief  service  to  the 
stage  lay  in  his  researches  into  costume  and  heraldry. 
As  early  as  1823  he  costumed  the  Kemble  production 
of  King  John  at  Drury  Lane  by  historical  principle. 
His  History  of  British  Costume  (1834)  was  standard. 
Dion  Boucicault  (1820-1890),  who  some  years  later 
was  to  do  significant  work  in  the  reorganization  of 
the  theatre,  attracted  attention  in  his  early  twenties 
by  writing  London  Assurance  (1841),  one  of  the  best 
comedies  of  manners  of  the  century. 

With  these  general  conditions  before  us  we  are  ready 
for  a  more  particular  statement  of  the  decline  of  the 
romantic  tradition  in  the  theatre. 


CHAPTER  n 
The  Decline  of  the  Romantic  Tradition 

In  the  decline  and  disappearance  of  a  romantic 
drama  is  to  be  found  a  suggestive  chapter  on  the 
development  of  a  new  function  of  the  theatre.  This 
function  was  not  easily  reached.  It  came  only  through 
much  experiment  and  a  plentiful  record  of  failure. 
And  it  arose  in  practical  opposition  to  the  most  strongly 
intrenched  tradition  on  the  stage  of  any  modern 
nation,  the  tradition  of  the  chaotic,  plastic,  magnified 
idealism  of  the  Shakespearean  play,  held  by  main 
force  on  the  stage  by  managers,  dramatists,  and  actors, 
until  the  new  popular  interests  swept  it  away. 

It  was  not  the  substance  of  the  Shakespearean 
ideal  that  remained.  It  was  only  the  misapplied 
formula.  Plays  that  were  written  in  the  romantic  spirit 
bear  all  the  evidences  of  compulsion,  of  a  pressure 
that  goes  against  the  artist's  grain.  Out  of  this  came 
the  closet  play,  in  itself  a  confession  of  divided  issues. 
The  closet  play  arises  from  the  application  of  the 
standards  of  one  day  to  the  art  of  a  later  day.  It  was 
the  result  of  an  effort  to  continue  the  tradition  of 
Shakespeare  or  the  Greeks  in  a  day  which  had  lost 

14 


THE  DECLINE   OF  THE  ROMANTIC  TRADITION      15 

both  traditions  on  the  stage.  The  romantic  dramatists 
of  the  nineteenth  century  fall  into  two  classes.  Either 
they  are  true  poets,  like  Byron  and  Browning,  neither 
of  whom  succeeded  on  the  stage,  or  they  are  journey- 
men who  work  by  models,  and  bargain  with  expediency. 

The  dramatic  poets  of  the  forties  were  desperately 
clinging  to  the  old  standards.  They  saw  the  theatre 
turning  to  uses  that  they  did  not  comprehend,  and  they 
laid  hold  of  the  only  security  that  lay  at  hand.  Some 
of  them  honestly  and  some  with  selfish  purpose,  but 
all  by  one  measure  or  another,  turned  to  Shakespeare 
for  support.  The  story  of  their  failures  and  their 
relative  successes,  is  full  of  suggestion  as  to  the  new 
problems  of  the  English  stage,  a  stage  that  was  not 
soon  again  to  deal  with  magnified  ideals  but  was  to 
deal  with  practical  facts,  and  had  by  experiment 
painfully  to  seek  for  a  method. 

Behind  every  dramatic  author  there  stands  the 
producer.  For  the  true  source  of  the  romantic  re- 
vival of  the  forties  we  look  to  William  Charles  Mac-, 
ready.  Reared  in  the  provincial  circuits,  coming 
to  London  at  the  age  of  twenty-three  in  1816,  play- 
ing his  first  part  in  London  in  The  Distressed  Mother, 
a  tragedy  of  the  French  regular  type,  for  the  next 
thirty-five  years  Macready  did  more  than  any  other 
man  of  the  century  to  encourage  the  composition-jiL 
poetic  plays.  Macready  early  supported  Shell,  he 
was  the  first  to  give  recognition  to  James  Sheridan 
Knowles,  and  in  1836  he  produced  Sergeant  Talfourd's 
severely  classical  tragedy  Ion.  In  this  year  he  quar- 
relled with  Bimn  at  Drury  Lane  and  took  over  his 


16  THE  CONTEMPORA.RY  DRAMA  OP  ENGLAND 

own  company.  During  his  management  of  Covent 
Garden  and  Drury  Lane  he  opened  the  stage  to  Edward 
Bulwer-Lytton's  The  Dvchess  de  la  Valli^re  (1836); 
The  Lady  of  Lyons  (1837) ;  Richelieu  (1839) ;  Robert 
Browning's  Strafford  (1837) ;  A  Blot  in  the  'Scutcheon 
(1843);  Henry  Taylor's  Philip  van  Artevelde  (1847), 
and  a  dozen  other  promising  works  in  dramatic  poetry. 

At  first  glance  a  list  of  plays  such  as  the  above 
would  seem  to  promise  a  new  romantic  summer.  It 
is  only  when  we  look  behind  the  plays  to  the  careers 
of  the  writers  that  we  see  how  hopeless  was  the  effort 
to  keep  poetic  drama  alive.  Without  exception  the 
careers  of  these  men  present  a  spectacle  of  divided 
loyalties,  of  ill-starred  effort  in  a  lost  cause,  of  surrender 
to  the  imperious  call  to  write  to  please  the  crowd, 
or  of  relinquishment  of  all  hopes  of  success  on  the 
stage.  With  the  exception  of  Browning's  work,  the 
best  plays  of  the  period  were  closet  plays,  R.  H.  Home's 
Death  of  Marlowe  (1837),  and  Sir  Henry  Taylor's 
Philip  van  Artevelde  (1834,  produced  1847). 

No  man  better  illustrates  the  confusion  of  the 
stage  of  the  time  than  Sheridan  Knowles  (1784-1862). 
In  succession  he  was  actor,  editor,  writer  for  the 
stage,  preacher,  and  teacher  of  elocution.  He  was 
continually  ill-paid  and  improvident.  He  began  with 
romantic  tragedy;  he  ended  with  poetic  comedy, 
comedy  of  manners,  melodrama,  domestic  drama,  and 
adaptation.  As  if  to  seal  his  association  with  the  past 
Knowles  attached  verse  to  all  these  classes  of  plays. 

If  in  form  Knowles  belonged  to  the  past,  in  substance 
and  temper  he  belonged  to  his  own  time.    There  is 


THE  DECLINE   OF  THE  ROMANTIC  TRADITION      17 

revealed  in  Knowles  for  the  first  time  in  English 
popular  romantic  drama  a  consciousness  of  class  dis- 
tinctions. His  fijst  play,  Virginiiis,  is  most  nearly 
Elizabethan  in  social  outlook.  The  populace  is  a 
Shakespearean  populace.  But  in  William  Tell  there 
are  the  passions  of  social  revolution.  Knowles  treats 
the  problems  of  the  changing  social  order  as  if  he  were 
treating  a  romantic  theme.  In  situations  which  Hebbel 
in  Germany  was  now  beginning  to  regard  as  of  social 
import  Knowles  saw  only  the  materials  of  romance. 
The  most  charming  characteristics  of  Knowles's  work 
are  his  power  of  domestic  feeling  and  his  delicacy  in 
the  treatment  of  women.  Even  his  most  austere 
plays  are  softened  by  a  healthy  domestic  spirit.  "We 
have  Roman  tunics  but  a  modern  English  heart", 
writes  R.  H.  Home  of  Virginiiis.  This  explains  why, 
though  Knowles  clung  to  verse,  his  plays  tended  to 
fancy  and  comedy  rather  than  to  heavy  declamation. 
And  perhaps  this  interest  in  the  immediate  present- 
ment rather  than  the  distant  ideal  explains  his  admi- 
rable treatment  of  women. 

In  Knowles's  contemporary,  Edward  Bulwer-Lytton 
(1803-1873),  one  can  read  other  evidences  of  the  state 
of  the  theatre.  An  aristocrat,  a  parliamentarian,  a 
writer  of  extraordinary  intellectual  and  technical 
facility,  Bulwer  had  no  aesthetic  conscience.  In  his 
second  effort  in  dramatic  composition  he  produced 
the  most  popular  romantic  play  of  the  century.  It 
is  not  on  record  that  he  ever  attempted  to  search  out 
the  spirit  of  the  age.  He  was  content  to  deal  with 
its  false  shows.    He  turned  to  the  theatre  to  show  his 


18  THE  CONTEMPORARY  DRAMA  OF  ENGLAND 

virtuosity.  He  dropped  it  when  success  no  longer 
smiled.  His  first  play,  The  Duchess  de  la  V allure, 
produced  by  Macready  at  Covent  Garden  in  1836, 
was  a  failure.  He  wrote  The  Lady  of  Lyons  (1837) 
to  show  that  he  could  do  the  task,  and  followed  this 
in  1839  with  Richelieu,  or.  The  Conspiracy.  His  inter- 
est in  the  stage  ceased  with  the  composition  of  Money 
(1840). 

The  Lady  of  Lyons  has  the  one  indispensable  merit 
of  the  romantic  play.  It  has  in  it  the  free  plunge  of 
life.  Against  this  merit  all  its  faults,  its  sentimentality, 
its  mock  revolutionary  spirit,  its  tawdry  imagery, 
bad  verse,  and  tricky  intrigue  count  for  nothing.  The 
play  has  succeeded  because  the  author  has  caught  the 
one  trick  of  the  Elizabethans  that  most  imitators 
miss.  Richelieu  is  a  better  play  than  The  Lady  of 
Lyons  in  that  its  motives  are  more  honest  and  its 
action  is  more  solid.  In  the  writing  of  this  play,  which 
is  really  a  character  chronicle,  Bulwer  has  the  advantage 
of  the  model  of  Hugo's  Cromwell.  Bulwer-Lytton 
rendered  no  service  to  the  stage  save  to  find  the  weak 
point  in  the  romantic  tradition  and  stab  it  through 
this. 

Below  both  Knowles  and  Bulwer  as  a  writer,  but 
no  less  significant  of  the  course  of  romantic  drama, 
stands  Westland  Marston  (1819-1890).  Marston's 
career  as  a  writer  covers  the  fifty  years  of  the  decline 
of  poetic  drama  and  the  rise  of  a  new  organization  and 
a  new  formula.  The  Patrician's  Daughter  was  pro- 
duced by  Macready  at  Drury  Lane  while  young  Brown- 
ing  was  hopefully  writing  for  the  stage.    His  last 


THE   DECLINE   OP  THE  ROMANTIC  TRADITION      19 

play  appeared  while  Tennyson,  under  the  encourage- 
ment of  Irving,  was  belatedly  turning  to  tragedy. 
Uninspired,  capable,  an  excellent  craftsman,  Marston 
devoted  himself  to  the  maintaining  of  the  ancient 
dignities  of  English  tragedy.  As  a  result  he  found 
himself  alienated  from  his  time.  Not  having  the 
imagination  of  Knowles,  he  had  more  of  the  sense  of 
social  issues.  Social  problems  are  treated  in  The 
Patrician's  Daughter,  written  when  he  was  only  twenty- 
two  ;  in  The  Heart  and  the  World  (1847) ;  Anne  Blake 
(1852),  a  domestic  drama;  A  Life's  Ransom  (1857), 
a  drama  of  combined  historical  and  domestic  character ; 
and  in  A  Hard  Struggle  (1858),  a  play  in  prose.  When 
he  took  up  historical  tragedy  as  in  Strathmore  (1849) 
and  Marie  de  Meranie  (1850)  he  was  not  successful. 
Though  never  a  playwright  of  first  rank,  Marston 
occupied  a  position  of  great  dignity  during  many 
years  and  as  critic  and  authority  on  stage  history 
exercised  an  important  influence. 

The  one  great  poet  who  contributed  plays  of  theatric 
and  poetic  merit  to  the  stage  of  the  nineteenth  century 
was  Robert  Browning.  Browning  was  turned  to  the 
stage  by  the  encouragement  of  Macready.  At  a 
meeting  in  Talfourd's  chambers  after  the  performance 
of  Ion  in  1836,  Macready  asked  Browning  to  write 
him  a  play  to  relieve  him  of  an  American  tour.  Out 
of  this  meeting  there  came  Strafford,  produced  by 
Macready  at  Covent  Garden  in  1837.  Thereafter  for 
some  years  Browning  wrote  plays  diligently,  but  after 
composing  six  plays  relinquished  hope  for  success  in 
the  acted  drama. 


20  THE  CONTEMPORARY  DRAMA  OP  ENGLAND 

Of  all  the  poets  of  the  century,  Browning  was  most 
richly  endowed  with  the  faculties  of  the  theatre.  He 
was  no  writer  of  lyrics  who  was  essaying  an  unsym- 
pathetic medium,  Jerrold's  words  after  Strafford, 
predicting  "for  Mr.  Browning  that  he  is  to  rise  to 
such  an  eminence  as  a  dramatic  poet  as  has  not  been 
attained  by  any  in  our  time  ",  were  abundantly  war- 
ranted by  his  gifts.  He  had  the  gift  of  character,  of 
pregnant  dialogue,  of  salient  action,  of  vitalized  archi- 
tecture. He  was  dramatic  in  that  he  was  concerned 
with  the  springs  and  sources  of  life  and  their  revela- 
tion in  the  expression  of  men.  He  was  one  with  the 
dramatists  of  all  time  in  that  he  probed  deep  to 
the  motives  of  men  and  contrived  the  uncovering  of  the 
sources  of  their  action. 

And  yet  he  failed  in  some  of  the  qualities  most  essen- 
tial to  the  playwright.  Browning  was  never  able  to 
handle  intrigue.  The  external  plottings  of  action 
seemed  to  him  unimportant  and  not  infrequently  un- 
true to  the  governing  impulses  of  men.  For  this  reason 
Browning  bridged  with  lyric  flights  spaces  he  could 
not  compass  dramatically.  He  failed  also  in  that  he 
was  imable  to  complete  the  external  expression  of  his 
internal  concept.  A  great  play  has  two  lives,  —  the 
inner,  which  is  the  greater;  and  the  outer,  which  is 
the  expression  of  the  inner.  Browning's  plays  are 
rich  with  the  greater  life ;  either  they  fail  altogether  of 
the  outer  life  or  this  is  disjointed,  incoherent,  articulate 
only  in  flashes.  These  things  give  to  Browning's 
plays  the  appearance  of  difficulty,  and  alienate  those 
who  demand  of  the  theatre  —  what  they  would  not 


THE   DECLINE   OP  THE  ROMANTIC  TRADITION      21 

demand  of  music  or  painting,  —  an  instant  impression 
at  the  first  blow. 

Is  drama  to  be  limited  to  the  surface  characteristics 
of  a  life  that  is  no  longer  lived  in  surfaces  or  may 
drama  reflect  in  form  and  substance  the  deepest  life 
of  the  time?  This  is  the  question  we  must  answer 
before  we  can  decide  that  Browning  was  not  a  drama- 
tist. He  had  reflected  an  age  of  complex  strains  rather 
than  the  dominant  and  simple  strains  that  Shakespeare 
knew.  In  nothing  had  he  made  a  greater  contribu- 
tion to  drama  than  in  his  avoidance  of  moral  impu- 
tations on  his  characters.  In  Shakespeare  men  are 
still  good  or  bad,  sinners  or  saved.  With  Browning 
all  men  are  of  the  "best."  The  doctrine  of  the  " best " 
that  is  Browning's  supreme  gift  to  all  art,  imfits  him 
for  the  styles  of  the  old  theatre.  Must  it  unfit  him 
for  the  new?  When  men  are  accustomed  to  differ- 
entiate men  by  moral  attributes  this  characterization 
by  loving  insight  seems  to  fail  in  definiteness.  Per- 
haps such  elevated  persons,  such  pure  spirits  never 
joined  in  plays  as  in  Browning's,  and  yet  he  had  vil- 
lains and  cheats  and  frauds,  pious  men  who  killed  with 
too  much  zeal  for  right  and  women  who  murdered 
with  specious  argument.  The  source  of  tragedy  in 
his  plays  lies  not  in  villainy  and  hate.  It  lies  in  one 
of  the  varieties  of  love,  in  one  or  another  of  the  illu- 
sions of  the  transcendental  motive.  The  weak  char- 
acters are  treated  with  a  light  but  never  with  a  forgetful 
hand,  as  though  he  would  see  them  honestly  but  not 
with  censure.  The  half-policies  of  Constance,  the 
fraud  of  Chiappino,  the  turncoat  Guibert,  the  weakling 


22   THE  CONTEMPORARY  DRAMA  OF  ENGLAND 

Charles  —  not  from  such  as  these  comes  the  drama  of 
contending  forces.  There  was  no  place  for  them  on 
the  stage  of  the  nineteenth  century,  a  century  that 
was  very  anxiously  grubbing  in  the  ground,  intent  on 
its  own  purposes,  and  out  of  sight  of  the  stars.  For 
the  poet  himself  the  decision  was  inevitable.  The 
forces  that  were  thinning  the  art  of  other  dramatists 
drew  Browning  away  from  the  stage  altogether.  He 
saw  that  he  could  not  give  the  best  of  his  intense 
and  scholarly  mind  to  the  stage  and  so  he  gave  up 
dramatic  authorship. 

Strafford  was  produced  May  1,  1837,  with  Mac- 
ready  as  Strafford  and  Helen  Faucit  as  Lady  Carlisle. 
The  play  was  well  received,  but  on  account  of  the 
failing  fortunes  of  the  theatre  was  soon  withdrawn. 
Strafford  was  Browning's  one  regular  historical  trag- 
edy to  find  performance.  His  chief  concern  was  not 
so  much  with  the  political  circumstances  of  the  tot- 
tering throne  of  Charles  I  as  with  the  minds  that  met 
each  other  around  it.  The  characters  are  personifica- 
tions of  strong,  fixed  ideas.  Only  Strafford  himself 
fails  of  a  pointed  clarity.  This  man,  battling  with 
forces  of  intrigue  at  court  and  the  inevitable  sweep 
of  a  new  order  against  which  he  is  trying  to  pro- 
tect his  king,  emerges  into  a  transcendent  figure,  self- 
abnegant  beyond  experience.  The  play  begins  with 
frustrate  tragedy,  the  giant  enmeshed  within  and  with- 
out. It  ends  in  moon  glow.  And  yet  the  present 
critic  knows  no  nineteenth-century  English  tragedy, 
with  the  exception  of  The  Cenci,  that  will  stand  beside 
it.    In  the  expressive  envelope  of  speech  by  which 


THE  DECLINE   OF  THE  ROMANTIC  TRADITION     23 

the  states  of  mind  of  the  characters  are  revealed,  Brown- 
ing here  reaches  new  heights  for  drama. 

Browning  came  upon  the  stage  amid  happy  augm*ies. 
For  some  time  he  bent  his  energies  toward  writing 
plays  that  would  be  practical  for  production.  King 
Victor  and  King  Charles  (published,  1842),  denominated 
by  the  author  "the  artistic  consequence  of  what 
Voltaire  had  termed  a  'terrible  event  without  conse- 
quences' in  the  life  of  Kmg  Victor  of  Sardinia  and  his 
son  Charles  ",  was  followed  by  The  Return  of  the  Druses. 
Both  of  these  plays  were  written  with  the  demands 
of  the  stage  in  mind.  Both  are  composed  for  only 
one  scene ;  and  in  both,  as  in  Strafford,  there  is  action 
and  intrigue.  In  the  former  there  were  only  four 
characters,  and  the  play  was  kept  scrupulously  to 
externals  of  speech.  For  this  reason  the  play  suffers 
in  poetry  and  in  magic.  In  spite  of  the  efforts  of  the 
author  to  write  for  the  stage,  these  plays  were  not 
considered  available  by  Macready. 

Browning  was  not  seen  upon  the  stage  again  until 
A  Blot  in  the  'Scutcheon  was  produced  under  unfavor- 
able auspices  by  Macready  at  Drury  Lane,  February  11, 
1843.  The  play  won  applause  but  not  hearty  support. 
It  was  repeated  by  Phelps  at  Sadler's  Wells  in  1848 
and  by  Lawrence  Barrett  in  America  in  1888.  A  Blot 
in  the  'Scutcheon  was  written  by  Browning  in  five  days. 
In  spite  of  its  lyrical  beauty  and  its  pathos  —  of  which 
Dickens  writes  enthusiastically  —  the  play  has  many 
faults.  Admiration  for  its  excellent  qualities  should 
not  permit  one  to  be  blind  to  the  strained  character 
of  the  plot.    The  situation  is  impossible  because  it 


24  THE  CONTEMPORARY  DRAMA  OP  ENGLAND 

violates  the  tact  both  of  the  theatre  and  of  life. 
We  have  not  only  to  accept  Mertoun's  plea  for  the 
hand  of  a  woman  who  is  secretly  his  mistress,  but  we 
have  to  believe  that  after  this  has  been  granted  he 
would  continue  the  association  clandestinely.  The 
situation  is  realized  only  by  means  of  divinations,  coin- 
cidences, and  repeated  actions.  A  like  charge  of  hasty 
workmanship  must  be  brought  against  In  a  Balcony. 
This  play  was  written  in  1853  after  Browning  had 
relinquished  hopes  of  stage  success.  There  is  no  flow 
of  force  from  character  to  character.  The  scenes 
between  Norbert  and  Constance  can  hardly  be  called 
argument,  much  less  dramatic  dialogue.  They  are 
chains  of  dramatic  monologue.  The  action  is  vague 
and  inconclusive.  One  may  not,  indeed  does  not,  ask 
that  all  action  be  external  and  physical.  He  does  ask 
that  if  the  action  be  placed  in  the  mind,  it  be  definite. 
But  if  A  Blot  in  the  'Scutcheon  and  In  a  Balcony 
fail  because  of  the  manner  of  the  handling  of  the  ma- 
terials, this  cannot  be  said  of  Colombe's  Birthday. 
Here,  too,  is  a  play  that  was  not  highly  successful  on 
the  stage.  It  was  refused  by  Kean  in  1844  and  left 
until  1853  for  performance  by  Phelps.  But  such  a 
failure  as  that  of  Colombe's  Birthday  must  be  ascribed 
to  the  failure  of  the  modern  theatre  to  broaden  its 
instrumentalities  to  the  highest  achievements  of  dra- 
matic art.  Here  is  a  play  that  treats  the  body  and 
soul  of  the  time  with  a  playful  fantasy  that  dulls  the 
edge  of  social  meanings.  It  is  a  simple  story  depend- 
ing upon  the  knitting  together  of  the  minds  of  men, 
their  ambitions,  their  loves,  their  strivings  for  inner 


THE   DECLINE   OP  THE   ROMANTIC  TRADITION      25 

honesty.  The  first  line  starts  the  action.  The  last 
line  ends  it.  Between  these  not  a  line  could  be  spared. 
The  structure  fits  the  plot.  There  is  no  sign  of  incom- 
pleteness or  of  a  tearing  of  the  cloth.  Strafford  and 
Colombe's  Birthday  stand  as  Browning's  warrant  as  a 
dramatist  of  the  first  rank.  With  Luria,  Browning 
gives  up  thought  of  stage  success.  In  moving  alto- 
gether in  zones  above  the  stage,  the  play  loses  its 
grip  on  the  concrete.  And  A  SouVs  Tragedy  and 
Pippa  Passes  are  Browning's  last  attempts  in  dramatic 
composition.  In  these  he  breaks  to  pieces  the  rules 
by  which  he  had  tried  to  limit  himself  and  indulges 
his  humor  and  fancy.  A  Soul's  Tragedy  is  in  two 
acts,  the  first  the  poetry  of  Chiappino's  life,  the 
second  the  prose,  and  the  language  is  fitted  to  the 
idea.  It  is  a  Machiavellian  study,  "all  sneering  and 
disillusion."  The  next  play  reveals  the  growing  rich- 
ness and  freedom  of  the  writer's  imagination,  which 
he  now  no  longer  attempted  to  limit  to  the  rules  of  a 
restricted  art.  Pippa  Passes,  though  "  no  stage  play  ", 
contains  material  for  at  least  four  plays,  and  the 
handling  is  in  every  sense  dramatic,  though  not  adapted 
to  the  requirements  of  the  stage. 

With  the  retirement  of  Macready  in  1851,  there 
ends  a  strong  support  of  the  ancient  tradition.  There 
now  arise  sociologicaLmelodrama  and  spectacle  plays. 
Macready's  successor,  Charles  Kean,  trimmed  his 
sails  to  the  wind  and  kept  Shakespeare  alive  by  the 
application  of  new  principles.  Charles  Kean,  the  son 
of  the  tragedian  Edmund  Kean,  in  1851  assumed 
management  of  the  Princess's  Theatre  in  London  and 


26  THE  CONTEMPORARY  DRAMA  OP  ENGLAND 

inaugurated  one  of  the  most  remarkable  programs  of 
Shakespeare  production  of  the  century.  As  a  producer 
Kean  was  faithful  to  the  romantic  play,  to  the  treat- 
ment of  which  he  applied  two  principles:  a  lavish 
scenic  display  and  a  code  of  archaeological  exactness 
in  text  and  costume.  Neither  one  of  these  principles 
was  new.  Planche  had  in  1823  designed  the  dresses 
and  superintended  the  production  of  Kemble's  King 
John,  and  his  History  of  British  Costume,  issued  in 
1834,  had  become  a  reference  book  of  the  stage. 
William  Hazlitt,  in  A  View  of  the  English  Stage,  had 
expressed  the  precept:  "The  only  rule  for  altering 
Shakespeare  is  to  retrench  certain  passages  which  may 
be  considered  either  superfluous  or  obsolete,  but  not 
to  add  or  transpose  anything."  Kean  used  these 
principles  as  a  means  of  connecting  the  decaying 
substance  of  the  romantic  play  with  the  newer  and 
more  immediate  interests  of  his  audiences.  His  pro- 
ductions of  Shakespeare's  plays,  of  which  he  presented 
a  large  number  with  increasing  magnificence,  were 
triumphant.  In  connection  with  each  performance 
he  issued  a  Fly-leaf  explaining  the  principles  upon 
which  the  production  was  based.  In  the  midst  of 
his  success  as  a  purveyor  of  the  romantic  drama,  Kean 
scarcely  can  have  been  aware  that  he  was  doing  hb 
part  to  herald  the  end  of  the  romantic  tradition. 

Several  years  before  Kean  inaugurated  his  regime 
at  the  Princess's  Theatre,  Phelps  opened  Sadler's 
Wells  Theatre  at  Islington,  ^May  27,  1844,  hoping 
eventually  to  "  render  it  what  a  theatre  ought  to  be  — 
a  place  for  justly  representing  the  works  of  our  great 


THE   DECLINE    OF  THE   ROMANTIC  TRADITION      27 

dramatic  poets."  In  spite  of  the  fact  that  he  refused 
to  bow  to  the  new  demands  Phelps  enforced  a  certain 
measure  of  success  by  strength  of  personahty  and 
fidehty  to  ancient  principles.  He  is  now  remembered 
for  the  fact  that  he  produced  more  of  Shakespeare's 
plays  than  any  other  nineteenth-century  manager 
with  the  exception  of  F.  R.  Benson.  He  closed  his 
theatre  in  1862. 

In  the  third  quarter  of  the  century  Shakespeare 
staging  was  in  a  state  of  decline.  Managers  complained 
that  the  taste  of  the  public  no  longer  permitted  the 
old  legitimate  drama.  From  across  the  channel  a  new 
school  of  "well  made"  plays  had  come  into  England. 
Native  dramatists  were  trying  their  pens  on  new  and 
commonplace  themes  which  they  were  aiming  to  ele- 
vate by  methods  unknown  to  the  romanticist.  After 
Phelps  there  came  for  a  few  years  the  pallid  art  of 
Gustavus  Brooke,  to  be  eclipsed  by  Fechter's  lyrical 
and  melodramatic  rendition  of  Hamlet,  played  in  a 
fair  wig  and  without  strutting.  Though  Fechter's 
vogue  was  short-lived,  it  effectually  put  an  end  to  the 
school  of  the  "noble  Romans."  "Shakespeare  spells 
ruin  and  Byron  bankruptcy  ",  said  Boucicault  in  sig- 
nalizing the  end  of  an  era.  In  these  circumstances 
Irving,  the  descendant  of  Kean,  brought  a  short  new 
vogue  for  poetic  drama  in  encouraging  the  aged 
Tennyson  to  try  his  hand  at  an  unfamiliar  art. 

In  the  same  sense  that  Macready  is  responsible  for 
Browning,  Irving  is  responsible  for  Tennyson.  But 
with  Tennyson  playwriting  was  an  afterthought,  a 
task  undertaken  late  in  a  life  that  had  already  done  its 


28   THE  CONTEMPORARY  DRAMA  OF  ENGLAND 

enduring  work.  Tennyson's  plays  are  significant  as 
showing  his  possession  in  old  age  of  a  fecund  and 
experimenting  mind.  In  spiritual  quality  they  dis- 
play the  characteristics  of  his  verse,  —  moral  solidity, 
sympathy  for  the  poor  with  no  savor  of  the  manor 
house,  and  a  felicity  of  phrase  that  never  refines  itself 
into  subtlety.  But  when  one  considers  them  as  stage 
plays  it  is  diflacult  to  find  anything  to  say  that  will  do 
credit  to  the  writer.  Control  was  on  them  from  the 
start.  They  were  exercises  imdertaken  by  a  master  in 
a  medium  with  which  he  was  unfamiliar.  The  little 
plays,  The  Falcon,  The  Cup,  The  Promise  of  May, 
can  be  compared  with  nothing  so  well  as  with  the 
fantasies  of  Musset,  and  nothing  so  well  shows  how 
far  Tennyson  falls  short  as  a  dramatist  as  does  such  a 
comparison. 

Tennyson's  chief  bid  for  remembrance  was  made 
in  his  historical  tragedies,  Queen  Mary,  Becket,  and 
Harold.  Only  two  of  these  were  produced,  the  first 
at  the  Lyceum  in  1876,  and  Becket  at  the  same  theatre 
in  1893.  These  are  plays  from  EngHsh  history,  a 
field  for  which  few  poets  have  Tennyson's  virile  British 
pen.  Each  of  them  has  something  of  the  hieratical 
element,  a  strain  that  in  Tennyson  approached  the- 
atric effectiveness.  In  management  of  historical  epi- 
sodes, in  handling  of  characters,  the  plays  show  fidelity 
to  the  spirit  of  history.  But  they  quite  fail  to  endow 
history  with  life.  They  have  the  appearance  of  me- 
chanical exercises  in  an  imitated  art.  The  one  scene 
in  all  these  plays  that  has  dramatic  vitality  is  the  open- 
ing scene  of  Becket  in  which  the  king  and  Becket  play 


THE   DECLINE   OF  THE   ROMANTIC  TRADITION      29 

chess  and  foreshadow  the  struggle  that  is  to  come. 
The  author  was  unable  to  distribute  his  action  among 
his  many  characters.  Becket  is  on  the  stage  too  much, 
and  his  successive  scenes  lack  climax.  When  Tenny- 
son creates  intrigue  or  imitates  the  comedy  of  the 
Elizabethan  play,  his  drama  becomes  rather  lower  than 
second  rate.  Queen  Mary  and  Harold  are  even  less 
successful  than  Becket.  The  former  play  is  false  in 
following  the  Shakespearean  social  divisions  of  clowns, 
common  people,  gentleman,  and  kings.  The  character 
of  Philip  is  badly  handled.  Though  not  successful 
as  drama,  Harold  is  remarkable  for  the  consistency 
with  which  the  temper  of  the  play  is  maintained  in  the 
color  of  the  Early  English  romances. 

Irving  was  the  last  representative  of  the  older  order 
of  production,  raised  to  eminence,  as  we  shall  see  in  a 
later  chapter,  by  his  contributions  to  the  dignity  of 
the  theatre.  The  plays  of  Tennyson  represent  a  late 
afterglow  of  the  sunset  of  the  romantic  drama  in 
England. 


CHAPTER  III 
Adaptation  and  Experiment 

In  1865  the  chaos  that  began  in  the  freeing  of  the 
theatres  came  to  an  end.  The  first  sign  of  new 
order  was  the  building  of  new  theatres.  From  1843 
to  1866  the  number  of  theatres  had  remained  fixed  at 
twenty-four  or  twenty-five.  By  the  end  of  the  century 
this  number  had  doubled.  More  significant  is  the 
growth  in  number  of  music  halls,  from  forty-one  in 
1866  to  over  five  hundred.  The  movement  for  new 
theatres  begins  with  Marie  Wilton's  opening  of  the 
Prince  of  Wales's  Theatre  in  1865.  Thereafter  new 
theatres  were  opened  every  year.  For  the  first  six 
years  the  list  includes  The  Holborn  (1866),  The 
Queen's  (1867),  The  Globe,  The  Gaiety  (1868),  The 
Charing  Cross  (1869),  The  Vaudeville  (1870),  The 
Court  Theatre,  The  Opera  Comique  (1871).  Later 
came  the  new  Haymarket  (1879),  Savoy  (1881), 
Prince's,  and  Criterion   (1880). 

The  inauguration  of  theatre  building  introduced  the 
era  of  commercial  speculation.  Many  of  these  first 
theatres  were  failures.  But  while  there  was  failure,  there 
was  also  success.    Actors,  authors,  and  managers  began 

30 


ADAPTATION  AND  EXPERIMENT       31 

to  share  large  incomes.  Audiences  began  to  increase 
in  size  and  improve  in  quality.  As  the  artificial  con- 
ditions that  had  governed  the  stage  began  to  pass  away 
many  of  the  people  who  had  before  neglected  the  theatre 
began  to  turn  to  it  for  entertainment.  Theatres 
became  more  ornate  and  more  comfortable.  The  day 
of  great  fortunes  and  reputations  had  begun. 

In  the  play  itself  there  were  signs  of  the  settling 
of  values.  As  the  romantic  tradition  subsided,  men 
turned  to  the  theatre  for  a  commentary  on  their  own 
times.  The  changes  in  the  intellectual  and  social  life 
of  England  were  reflected  in  the  new  technique  of  the 
play  and  the  new  ideals  of  its  production.  To  the  new 
popular  interests,  practical,  immediate,  full  of  problems, 
the  romantic  play  of  idealism  made  little  appeal. 
Boucicault  expresses  the  condition  of  society  and  the 
stage  when  he  writes,  "Our  Milton  has  been  directed 
to  dismount  Pegasus  and  bestride  the  lightning  which 
science  has  bridled,  Shakespeare  is  occupied  in  editing 
a  morning  newspaper,  Dante  is  exploring  the  Isthmus 
of  Panama  to  locate  an  interoceanic  canal.  Bacon  is 
trying  to  reach  the  North  Pole,  while  Michael  Angelo 
is  inventing  a  sewing  machine." 

It  need  hardly  be  said  that  the  new  plays  were 
trashy  enough.  In  casting  away  the  romantic  play, 
men  had  discarded  the  only  tradition  that  has  a  firm 
hold  on  the  English  craftsman  of  the  stage.  The 
English  dramatist  needed  now  to  learn  new  rules  for 
the  making  of  a  play,  —  a  play  that  should  be  truthful 
in  observation,  immediate  in  contacts,  and  serviceable 
in  the  creation  of  new  ideas.    In  this  pursuit  the  Eng- 


32  THE  CONTEMPORA.RY  DRAMA  OP  ENGLAND 

lish  dramatist  joined  with  the  dramatists  of  modern 
Europe,  all  of  whom  were  attempting  to  discover  the 
formulas  that  underlie  a  confused  social  state.  But 
the  English  dramatist  was  behind  his  fellows  in  that  he 
had  little  technical  skill  in  the  making  of  new  codes  of 
art.  When  the  English  dramatist  cast  about  for  rules 
by  which  to  write  his  new  play,  he  did  as  he  had  always 
done  before  under  like  conditions.  He  proceeded  to 
borrow  from  France. 

So  begins  an  era  of  French  influence  to  be  compared 
with  the  dominion  of  French  drama  in  the  eighteenth 
century.  Though  the  Act  of  1852  protected  the  foreign 
author  for  five  years,  there  was  until  1875  no  limitation 
upon  adaptation,  and  it  was  not  imtil  1887  that  foreign 
works  were  fully  protected.  Until  this  latter  date  all 
the  writers  of  modern  plays,  —  Reade,  Robertson, 
Taylor,  Boucicault,  Albery,  Byron,  —  learned  their 
trade  in  the  school  of  adaptation.  And  the  new 
French  play  created  the  new  English  audience.  For 
thirty  years  after  1865  no  English  writer  succeeded 
on  the  stage  solely  upon  his  own  work.  French  drama 
was  both  a  school  and  an  open  door  to  the  English 
theatre.  And  of  the  play  it  may  be  said  as  Lewes 
said  of  the  novel,  that  the  frequency  of  translation  into 
English  was  in  inverse  ratio  to  merit.  The  plays  that 
could  be  adapted  to  English  use  were  the  plays  of  the 
broadest  external  appeal.  The  more  delicate  strains 
of  French  artistry  continued  to  evade  the  hand  of  the 
adapter. 

The  new  drama  of  practical  interests  did  not  come 
at  once.    In  England  as  on  the  Continent  it  had  a 


ADAPTATION  AND  EXPERIMENT  33 

certain  connection  with  romantic  drama  through 
the  transition  form  of  melodrama.  The  melodrama 
of  the  nineteenth  century  combines  the  dynamic  prin- 
ciple of  the  romantic  play  with  the  substance  of  the 
naturalistic  play.  The  so-called  Gothic  melodrama  of 
the  early  years  of  the  century  had  been  a  debased 
reflection  in  natural  terms  of  the  passion  of  German 
romanticism.  Maturin  in  Bertram  and  Planch e  in 
Charles  XII  had  tried  to  keep  alive  the  austere 
tradition  of  verse  tragedy,  but  Holcroft's  Tale  of 
Mystery,  produced  at  Covent  Garden  in  1802,  had 
been  followed  by  a  line  of  horror  and  mystery  melo- 
dramas down  to  Buckstone's  Dream  at  Sea  and  the 
later  adaptations  of  Mosenthal's  Deborah,  which  ap- 
peared in  England  as  Leah  (1863),  Ruth  (1868),  and 
Hagar,  the  Outcast  Jewess  (1869). 

The  debasing  of  the  ideal  currency  to  cheaper  uses  is 
seen  again  in  the  French  melodrama  that  follows  the 
French  Romantic  Revival.  The  French  Romantic 
movement  had  been  inspired  by  an  English  writer, 
Scott,  and  by  an  English  company  of  actors.  The 
movement  did  not  last  long  and  in  its  best  aspects  had 
slight  influence  on  the  English  stage.  But  from  some 
of  its  meaner  traits  and  from  its  baser  copies  there  come 
the  beginnings  of  the  modern  French  influence  on  the 
English  theatre.  The  most  important  feature  in  the 
control  of  the  new  interests  is  found  in  the  lowering 
of  the  caliber  of  the  tragic  hero  to  the  dimensions  of 
a  figure  of  entertainment  rather  than  of  tragedy. 

In  this  way  the  Bravo  is  explained.  Usually  he 
was  a  potentate  whose  exploits  and  fate  provided 


^ 


34  THE  CONTEMPORARY  DRAMA  OF  ENGLAND 

a  certain  amount  of  heroic  circumstance  without  en- 
tailing the  display  of  true  heroism.  He  did  not  lack 
a  certain  historical  warrant,  as  is  seen  in  Hugo's  Crom- 
well, Dumas's  Henry  III,  and  Charles  VII.  Often  he 
was  a  pretender,  an  upstart,  or  an  outcast  nobleman, 
as  in  Hugo's  Hernani.  After  the  first  romanticists  of 
France  had  been  followed  by  their  more  sensational 
disciples,  the  Bravo  made  himself  increasingly  felt 
both  in'  France  and  England.  Casimir  Delavigne, 
Labrousse,  author  of  Louis  XIV,  Dumanoir,  Dennery, 
Legouv6,  were  all  put  under  tribute.  Of  these  the  first 
was  most  influential,  his  Louis  XI,  taken  from  Scott, 
being  played  by  Kean  (1855)  and  Irving  (1878) ;  his 
Don  Juan  d'AutricJie  being  produced  (1836,  1864) ; 
and  his  Marino  Faliero,  from  Byron,  being  played  by 
Macready.  One  of  the  most  famous  of  the  Bravo 
plays  was  Don  Cesar  de  Bazan  of  Dumanoir  and 
Dennery,  first  produced  in  London  in  1844. 

The  chief  figure  in  these  plays  was  what  was  known  as 
the  Frederick  Lemaitre  hero,  named  from  the  famous 
premier  of  the  Porte-Saint-Martin.  Dumas's  Monte 
Crista,  played  first  in  London  in  1848  in  a  French 
adaptation  and  again  in  an  English  version  in  1868, 
combines  the  characteristics  of  the  Bravo  with  the 
modem  adventurer  of  business.  The  heroic  French 
melodrama  gained  an  increased  vogue  through  the 
acting  in  1860  and  thereafter  of  Charles  Fechter  in 
Ruy  Bias  (1860),  Hamlet  (1861),  Don  Cesar  de  Bazan, 
Monte  Cristo,  Les  Frh'ea  Corses,  Rouge  et  Noir.  Of 
Bravo  melodramas  the  most  popular  was  Charles 
Selby's  famous  Robert  Macaire,  first  offered  at  Covent 


ADAPTATION  AND  EXPERIMENT  35 

Garden  in  1843  from  the  French  VAuherge  des  Adrets.     7 
To  this  class  belong  Taylor  and  Reade's  The  King's 
Rival,  produced  at  the  St.  James's  Theatre,  1854,  and 
many  heroic  plays  by  Taylor,  Boucicault,  Wills,  Meri- 
vale,  and  others. 

Another  type  of  play  directly  derived  from  France,  T^, 
though  having  some  source  in  English  and  German 
romance,  was  the  monster  play.  The  modern  vogue  ?  — 
of  the  monster  was  begun  by  Hugo  in  the  horrors  of 
his  early  novel,  Han  d'Islande  (1823).  The  monster 
appears  again  in  Quasimodo  in  Notre  Dame  de  Paris 
(1831)  dramatized  for  England  by  Fitzball  as  Esmer- 
alda; or.  The  Deformed  of  Notre  Dame  (1834).  The 
monster  was  often  a  mountebank  or  a  clown  whose 
misshapen  exterior  covers  a  tragic  soul.  A  popular 
monster  play  was  Hugo's  Le  Roi  s'amuse.  Tom 
Taylor  adapted  this  play,  from  which  also  is  taken 
the  opera  Rigoletto,  under  the  title  The  Fool's  Re- 
venge (1869).  Another  form  of  the  monster  story  is 
Belphegor,  adapted  first  by  Charles  Webb  in  1856 
from  Dennery  and  Fournier's  Paillasse  and  played 
again  in  1865  under  the  title  of  The  Mountebank. 
The  monster  was  often  a  woman.  Writing  from  Paris 
in  1856,  Thackeray  mentions  Lucrece  Borgia  and 
Mary  Tudor  as  two  popular  female  monsters.    While  i_] 

Frederick  Lemattre  was  the  creator  of  the  Bravo  on 
the  French  stage.  Mile.  George  was  the  creator  of  the 
female  monster  of  Tour  de  Nesle,  of  LtLcrh^e  Borgia,  of 
Madame  de  Brinvilliers.  The  female  monster,  under 
one  or  another  of  the  guises  of  lust,  blood-thirstiness 
or  cunning,  had  a  certain  vogue  in  England  but  not  the 


36   THE  CONTEMPORARY  DRAMA  OF  ENGLAND 

popularity  of  the  Bravo.  The  latest  appearance  of 
this  character  was  in  the  plays  of  Sardou  as  interpreted 
by  Sarah  Bernhardt. 

The  French  sensation  melodrama  of  Bravos  and 
monsters  was  influential  in  England  not  only  in  direct 
adaptation  but  as  well  in  supplying  characters  and 
conventions  to  the  plays  of  half  a  century.  Among 
the  scores  of  plays  of  this  type  produced  in  England 
those  which  had  the  greatest  influence,  aside  from 
the  plays  mentioned,  are  The  Cor^ican  Brothers, 
adapted  from  Dumas's  novel,  Les  Frhes  Corses,  by 
Dion  Boucicault  for  the  Princess's  Theatre  in  1852, 
Le  Courrier  de  Lyon  adapted  as  The  Courier  of  Lyons 
(1854)  and  The  Lyons  Mail  (played  by  Irving,  1877) ; 
and  the  Erckmann-Chatrian  melodrama,  The  Bells, 
played  by  Irving  in  1871. 

We  now  come  to  London  melodrama.  This  type  is 
distinguished  from  the  French  sensation  play  in  that  it 
has  little  if  any  romantic  motive  and  is  usually  con- 
cerned with  moral  problems.  For  the  beginnings  of 
this  type  of  play  we  go  back  to  the  bourgeois  tragedy 
of  Lillo  in  the  eighteenth  century.  An  early  nine- 
teenth-century melodrama  of  this  type,  the  source  of 
hundreds  of  later  melodramas,  is  Jonathan  Bradford, 
or  The  Murder  at  the  Roadside  Inn,  written  by  Edward 
Fitzball  in  1833.  This  type  of  melodrama  is  supple- 
mented by  the  increased  interest  in  city  life  and  in 
crimes  and  criminals  in  which  the  influence  of  Bulwer- 
Lytton,  Dickens,  and  Charles  Reade  may  be  detected. 
Here  again  France  exercised  an  influence.  Following 
the  publication  of  Eugene  Sue's  The  Mysteries  of  Paris 


ADAPTATION  AND  EXPERIMENT  37 

(1842-1843),  there  came  such  plays  as  Feval's  Mysteres 
de  Londres  and  Bourgeois's  Notre  Dame  de  Paris.  The 
famous  play  Pauvres  de  Paris  was  adapted  to  the 
English-speaking  world  under  many  titles,  such  as 
Fraud  and  its  Victims  (1857),  The  Streets  of  London 
(1864),  London  by  Gaslight  (1868),  and  Augustin 
Daly's  famous  Under  the  Gaslight  (1867).  Against  a 
Balzacian  background  of  houses  and  streets  an  action 
heavily  freighted  with  social  consciousness  took  place. 
To  this  general  type  was  added  in  1862  the  tremendous 
influence  of  Les  Miserahles,  the  first  English  adaptation 
of  which  was  Revelations  of  London  (1868).  Thereafter 
came  such  panoramic  plays  as  London  Life,  Youth, 
The  World,  Lights  o'  London,  and  the  later  melodramas 
of  J.  R.  Sims,  Paul  Merritt,  Henry  Pettitt.  Crude  as 
was  the  London  melodrama,  there  were  features  in  it 
of  native  English  life  and  of  forthright  principle  that 
made  it  a  useful  stepping-stone  to  other  forms  of  drama. 
The  chief  influence  of  French  drama  in  achieving 
workmanlike  standards  came  through  the  "well-made" 
play.  Like  the  melodrama,  this  play  discarded  the 
ideal  characters  of  romance  for  men  in  their  more 
natural  dimensions.  It  also  dismissed  elevated  mo- 
tives and  passions  and  became  altogether  a  fabric  of 
entertainment  knit  out  of  the  strands  of  the  common- 
place. The  creator  of  the  French  "  well-made  "  play  was 
Eugene  Scribe.  In  perfecting  the  formula  of  this  play 
Scribe  accomplished  much  good  along  with  something 
of  a  more  dubious  quality.  He  taught  men  that  com- 
monplace men  and  events  are  interesting  if  they  are 
skilfully  presented.     When  all  is  said  against  Scribe, 


38  THE  CONTEMPORAEY  DRAMA  OP  ENGLAND 

it  must  be  recognized  that  in  showing  the  interest  in 
events  without  calling  upon  the  support  of  passion  or 
sensation  he  did  a  great  deal  to  provide  the  materials 
for  later  dramatists.  Though  his  followers  soon  dis- 
covered his  shortcomings,  there  are  few  who  can  dis- 
avow his  influence. 

Scribe's  chief  service  to  England  was  as  a  school-master 
of  dramatists.  In  perfecting  the  "well-made"  play, 
Scribe  actually  perfected  an  international  type  of  drama, 
for  the  rules  he  evolved  were  as  appropriate  to  the 
human  nature  of  England  as  of  France.  The  English 
dramatist  showed  his  first  sign  of  ability  to  handle 
contemporary  topics  when  he  began  to  learn  Scribe's 
lessons.  In  addition  he  used  the  Scribe  play  as  a  mine 
of  material  which  he  fashioned  over  according  to  the 
more  rigid  code  of  English  morality.  The  "  well-made  " 
play,  with  its  "gay  Colonels,  smart  widows,  and  silly 
husbands,"  became  in  England  a  story  of  disguised 
flirtations  and  avoided  dangers.  Boucicault's  Irish 
plays  were  Scribe  plays  transplanted  to  the  British 
Islands,  and  overlarded  with  sentiment  and  romance. 

The  Scribe  play  deserved  no  serious  consideration 
either  for  its  tears  or  for  its  laughter.  Sometimes  it 
was  graceful.  Always  it  was  adroit.  But  it  could  never 
be  mistaken  for  either  art  or  life.  It  was  neither  poetry, 
satire,  nor  commentary.  It  was  an  entertainment 
machine  adjusted  to  the  demands  of  the  new  audiences. 
For  its  purpose  it  borrowed  from  the  effective  tricks 
of  all  orders  of  plays  without  belonging  to  any  of  them. 
It  was  not  an  art  of  surfaces  as  is  comedy  of  manners, 
or  playful  as  is  fantasy.    When  it  approached  tragedy 


ADAPTATION  AND  EXPERIMENT  39 

it  was  most  comic.  It  represented  a  highly  expert 
profession,  and  we  pay  the  maker  the  same  credit  we 
give  to  any  one  who  knows  his  trade.  The  "  well-made  " 
play  did  not  go  as  far  in  England  as  it  has  gone  in 
France.  And  when  it  did  appear  it  was  usually  nothing 
more  than  an  adaptation  or  translation.  But  there 
are  some  faults  that  are  never  again  seen  after  Scribe 
had  taught  dramatists  how  to  avoid  them.  The  "  well- 
made  "  play  was  the  first  consistent  adaptation  of  the 
natural  form  to  the  common  substance. 

Though  adaptation  was  the  rule  of  the  day,  it  would 
be  false  to  assume  that  there  was  no  effort  to  write 
EngUsh  plays.  As  rapidly  as  they  could  do  so  the 
dramatists  were  taking  up  new  ground  and  occupying 
it.  Out  of  these  conditions  there  developed  a  new 
group  of  playwrights,  men  who  found  their  support 
in  adaptation  and  as  rapidly  as  possible  wrote  plays  of 
their  own.  First  of  these  is  Dion  Boucicault,  born  at 
DubUn,  December  26,  1820.  While  in  management 
Boucicault  had  helped  to  make  an  organization  that 
would  tap  the  new  theatre-going  populace,  as  a  drama- 
tist he  helped  to  tap  the  spring  of  common  feeling.  In 
his  Leaves  from  a  Dramatist's  Diary  ^  Boucicault  mentions 
three  types  of  plays  as  popular  in  his  day,  —  society 
dramas,  domestic  dramas,  and  sensation  dramas.  He 
had  written  all  these  and  burlesque  and  verse  plays  as 
well.  He  was  the  author  of  two  of  the  best  comedies 
of  his  time,  London  Assurance  (1841)  and  Old  Heads 
and  Young  Hearts  (1844).  But  the  work  for  which  he 
is  chiefly  remembered  is  his  Irish  drama  beginning  with 
Colleen  Bawn    (1860)  and   including  Arrah-na-Pogue 


40   THE  CONTEMPORARY  DRAMA  OF  ENGLAND 

(1865)  and  the  Shaugraun  (1875).  In  The  Octoroon 
(1861)  Boucicault  used  the  Creole  in  much  the  same 
way  that  he  had  used  the  Irish.  Boucicault  was  a 
journalist.  His  plays  were  written  for  a  day.  But  his 
importance  in  the  history  of  the  nineteenth-century 
theatre  cannot  be  denied. 

Like  Boucicault,  Tom  Taylor  was  a  man-of-all-work 
as  a  composer  for  the  stage.  He  was  translator, 
adapter,  collaborator,  writer  of  historical,  domestic, 
and  sensation  plays.  With  Mark  Lemon,  Douglas 
Jerrold,  F.  C.  Burnand,  E.  L.  Blanchard,  and  W.  S. 
Gilbert,  he  represented  that  group  of  wits  who,  while 
writing  for  the  humorous  weeklies,  continued  as  well 
to  write  for  the  stage.  Under  the  influence  of  the 
verse  plays  he  wrote  three  historical  tragedies,  'Twixt 
Axe  and  Crown,  Joan  of  Arc,  Anne  Boleyn.  He  assisted 
Charles  Reade  in  three  plays,  Masks  and  Faces,  A  King's 
Rival,  Two  Loves  and  a  Life.  Among  his  hundred 
plays  the  following  are  remembered :  The  Ticket  of 
Leave  Man  (from  Brisebarre  and  Nus),  The  Overland 
Route,  Plot  and  Passion,  Still  Waters  Run  Deep,  The 
Unequal  Match.  Not  a  great  man,  his  success  was 
made  by  being  a  very  capable  ordinary  man. 

With  far  more  intellectual  substance  than  Taylor, 
Charles  Reade  is  more  of  a  dramatist  and  less  of  a 
playwright.  His  first  ambition  was  to  be  known  as  a 
maker  of  plays.  In  this  he  was  not  successful,  for  in 
at  least  two  directions,  in  historical  romance  and  in 
the  purpose  novel,  his  fame  has  exceeded  that  gained 
in  the  theatre.  Prolix  and  redundant  in  his  own  work, 
his  best  traits  as  a  craftsman  appeared  when  he  was 


ADAPTATION  AND  EXPERIMENT  41 

adapting  other  men's  work.  He  adapted  Scribe's 
The  Ladies'  Battle  (1851),  Maquet's  Le  Chateau  Gran- 
tier  in  The  Double  Marriage  (1867),  and  Drink  (1879) 
from  Zola's  L'Assommoir.  Though  not  a  dramatist  of 
first  rank,  Reade  had  an  excellent  gift  of  characteriza- 
tion, his  power  being  particularly  shown  in  the  hand- 
ling of  eccentric  and  sympathetic  characters. 

Three  parodists  who  gained  success  in  burlesque 
are  distinguished  by  their  efforts  to  better  their  output. 
E.  L.  Blanchard  (1820-1889),  contributor  to  Punch, 
critic,  Bohemian,  supplied  the  Drury  Lane  Pantomime 
for  thirty-seven  years,  writing  in  aU  some  hundred 
pantomimes.  F.  C.  Burnand  (1836-/ f/l^  had  used 
Punch  as  a  medium  of  parody  on  the  drama  in  the 
same  way  that  young  Thackeray  had  used  it  for  the 
novel.  He  was  a  writer  of  extravaganzas  and  nautical 
melodrama  and  satires.  H.  J.  Byron  (1834-1884) 
was  a  maker  of  burlesque  for  the  Strand  Theatre. 
He  was  a  punster,  a  handler  of  egregious  paradoxes, 
a  hack,  now  best  remembered  because  in  1865  he 
joined  Marie  Wilton  in  organizing  the  Prince  of  Wales's 
Theatre.  From  his  scores  of  plays  nothing  remains 
save  the  sense  that  he  might  have  done  good  things. 
All  these  writers  are  characterized  by  the  same 
traits.  They  show  skill  in  the  telling  of  an  untrue 
or  a  shallow  story,  but  offer  no  food  for  thought,  nor 
commentary  on  life.  The  nearest  one  gets  to  life  is  its 
gay  words  and  its  vulgarisms.  Significantly  enough, 
one  of  the  characters  that  comes  down  to  us  from 
before  Robertson  is  that  of  the  poor  tragedian  Triplet 
in  Reade's  Masks  and  Faces,  the  only  representative  of 


42   THE  CONTEMPORARY  DRAMA  OF  ENGLAND 

the  old  traditions  now  lost  in  the  din  of  jugglers  and 
mountebanks. 

All  these  were  experimenters,  men  who,  knowing  the 
difficult  straits  of  the  theatre,  handled  its  art  gingerly. 
There  was  needed  some  one  with  a  harder  texture  of 
imagination  who  could  take  the  necessary  next  step 
toward  a  true  English  theatre.  Thomas  W.  Robert- 
son (1829-1871)  is  no  accident  in  the  English  theatre. 
His  family  had  for  generations  served  on  the  pro- 
vincial circuits.  Before  his  success  came,  he  had  been 
an  actor,  a  hack  writer,  and  an  adapter.  He  had 
attended  school  in  France  and  had  more  than  the 
average  dramatist's  knowledge  of  the  French  theatre. 
He  had  adapted  farces  from  Dennery  and  Clairville, 
and  Labiche;  dramas  from  Dennery  and  Clement, 
Scribe,  and  M.  Carre ;  comedy  from  Scribe  and  Legouve. 
When  Marie  Wilton  gave  him  his  opportunity,  he  was 
ready  to  make  a  real  contribution  to  the  English 
theatre. 

It  has  been  remarked  that  most  of  the  influence 
from  France  was  from  the  poorer  kind  of  play.  Mean- 
while there  was  in  France  another  kind  of  play,  which 
was  truer  to  the  standard  of  art.  That  there  is  some 
influence  in  England  from  the  sedater  dramatists  of 
France  is  seen  in  the  fact  that  even  while  the  English- 
man is  learning  his  trade  from  Scribe  he  is  making 
sporadic  and  usually  unsuccessful  attempts  to  adapt 
to  the  English  stage  the  works  of  Feuillet  and  Augier. 
Octave  Feuillet  was  too  refined,  too  elegant  and  aris- 
tocratic, his  work  was  touched  with  too  strong  a  vein 
of  polite  melancholy  to  adapt  well.    But  his  plays 


ADAPTATION  AND   EXPERIMENT  43 

were  known.  His  Le  Village  had  been  presented  as 
The  Cosy  Couple  in  the  fifties,  and  in  1877  it  was  pre- 
sented again  as  The  Vicarage,  a  Fireside  Story.  His 
Le  roman  d'un  jeune  homme  pauvre  was  adapted  by 
John  Oxenford  as  Ivy  Hall,  1859,  and  by  Westland 
Marston  as  A  Hero  of  Romance  (1868).  Augier  was 
but  little  adapted  in  English,  but  it  is  certain  that  he 
was  known.  His  L'Aventuriere,  which  Robertson  was 
to  adapt  as  Home,  had  been  played  in  French  in  Lon- 
don before  1850.  And  there  was  in  his  school  "du 
bon  sens",  a  spirit  that  must  have  been  grateful  to 
the  English  dramatist.  His  concern  with  politics,  the 
home,  and  business  was  far  more  to  the  Englishman's 
taste  than  Dumas's  interest  in  social  outcasts  and  ille- 
gitimate children.  Augier  defended  social  institutions 
in  quite  a  middle-class  way.  "A  woman  without 
virtue  (pudeur)  is  no  more  a  woman  than  the  man  with- 
out courage  is  a  man  ",  he  says.  Now  this  the  English- 
man might  take  as  a  philosophy  with  which  to  begin 
his  difficult  task  of  creating  a  modem  English  drama. 
That  Robertson  knew  Augier  is  indicated  by  a  note  to 
the  published  edition  of  Society,  showing  the  author's 
indebtedness  for  an  incident  to  Augier's  Les  Effrontes, 
and  by  his  adaptation  of  UAverUuri^re. 

Robertson's  real  contribution  is  his  own  point  of 
view  as  applied  to  the  building  of  a  play.  Now  for  the 
first  time  in  the  domestic  play  there  is  some  evidence 
of  literary  interest.  Many  playwrights  had  been  in- 
fluenced to  their  hurt  by  the  broad  characterization 
of  Dickens.  Robertson  boldly  takes  as  his  model  the 
whimsical  irony  of  Thackeray,  and  the  disjointed  but 


44   THE  CONTEMPORARY  DRAMA  OP  ENGLAND 

intense  realism  of  George  Borrow.  With  the  author 
of  Vanity  Fair  he  discards  formahties  of  plot  and  de- 
pends [for  interest  upon  the  close  texture  of  his  char- 
acter study  and  his  knowledge  of  life.  Though  some 
forty  comedies,  dramas,  and  farces  were  written  by 
Robertson,  his  fame  rests  upon  the  series  of  plays 
written  after  his  first  Prince  of  Wales's  success  and  in- 
cluding Society,  Ours,  Caste,  Play,  School,  Home, 
Dreams,  M.  P.,  and  War.  Of  these  all  but  Dreams, 
Home,  and  War  were  presented  at  the  Prince  of  Wales's 
Theatre. 

It  was  the  success  of  David  Garrick,  adapted  from  the 
French  for  E.  A.  Sothern,  that  encouraged  Robertson 
to  try  a  play  in  a  new  vein.  This  play  was  Society, 
which,  submitted  to  the  Haymarket,  was  denounced 
as  rubbish.  Finally  accepted  by  Marie  Wilton  with 
the  remark  that  "it  is  better  to  be  dangerous  than  to 
be  dull ",  it  had  its  first  London  production,  November 
11,  1865,  with  Marie  Wilton  as  Maud  Hetherington, 
Mr.  Bancroft  as  Sidney  Daryl,  and  John  Hare  as  Lord 
Ptarmigant.  The  play  was  an  immediate  success. 
Society  displays  characteristics  of  the  older  drama  that 
Robertson  discarded  in  his  later  plays.  The  action  is 
based  on  a  multitude  of  circumstances,  many  of  them 
smacking  of  the  property  room,  —  the  mistaken  pater- 
nity of  a  child,  the  bought  notes,  the  arrest  for  debt, 
the  loved  and  the  unloved  suitor,  the  usurious  Jew. 
The  acts  are  broken  into  scenes;  there  are  puns  and 
long  asides.  The  plot  is  divided  into  two  strands  of 
action,  the  one  taking  place  in  the  Lincoln's  Inn  Owl's 
Roost ;  the  other  taking  place  in  the  Ptarmigant  house- 


ADAPTATION  AND  EXPERIMENT  45 

hold.  But  with  its  traits  of  the  older  technique  there 
is  a  touch  of  new  reality.  Men  and  women  are  brought 
upon  the  stage  who  were  unaccustomed  actors  before 
the  footlights.  There  was  the  world  of  the  new  com- 
mercial class,  of  the  newspaper,  of  Parliament.  The 
settings  were  arranged  with  that  care  for  truth  that 
came  to  be  the  mark  of  all  Robertson's  plays.  Robert- 
son could  make  scenery  speak  naturally.  Character 
and  sentiment  are  revealed  with  a  fine  sense  of  value. 
Nothing  could  be  more  economical  of  means  than  the 
simple  love  exchanges  between  Sidney  and  Maud.  But 
the  author  does  not  stop  with  a  surface  effect.  He 
makes  his  play  stand  for  a  commentary  on  certain 
forces  of  the  time,  the  power  of  money  in  society,  the 
suasion  of  the  press,  the  effect  of  social  ambition  upon 
the  author.  There  is  nothing  of  the  revolutionist 
about  Robertson.  He  does  not  favor  the  poor  over 
the  rich.  He  judges  men  as  men.  He  hates  snobs, 
whether  those  of  place  or  those  who  would  achieve 
place.  In  all  these  respects  Society  takes  new  ground 
in  English  drama. 

In  Robertson's  next  play,  Ours,  presented  in  London 
September  15,  1866,  are  displayed  the  characteristics 
of  construction  from  which  the  title  "cup  and  saucer 
play"  was  derived.  The  play  almost  totally  lacks  in 
intrigue,  but  what  it  lacks  in  plot  it  makes  up  in  an 
intensity  of  observation  and  in  an  ability  to  transfer  to 
the  stage  the  fleeting  impressions  of  contemporary  life. 
The  play  is  in  fact  a  fabric  of  contemporary  sensations 
of  which  the  strongest  are  the  feelings  of  patriotism  and 
affectionate  pride  in  her  soldiers  aroused  in  England 


46  THE  CONTEMPORARY  DRAMA  OP  ENGLAND 

at  the  time  of  the  Crimean  War.  In  stage  craftsman- 
ship, devoid  of  artifices  or  effects,  it  is  a  masterpiece. 

Robertson's  next  play.  Caste,  presented  for  the  first 
time  at  the  Prince  of  Wales's  Theatre,  April  6,  1867, 
though  not  immediately  the  most  popular  of  the  series, 
stands  artistically  the  highest  in  the  list.  More  sub- 
stantial than  Ours,  it  is  more  veritable  than  Society. 
The  action  grows  out  of  the  moral  plot  and  reflects 
it.  There  is  no  adventitious  intrigue.  The  dialogue 
is  easy  and  natural  and  sufficiently  laconic.  As  in 
the  former  play  the  scenes  were  carefully  arranged  by 
the  author,  and  specific  instructions  were  given  as  to  the 
way  lines  were  to  be  spoken  in  avoiding  the  stagey  and 
commonplace. 

The  substance  of  the  play  was  English.  It  was  based 
upon  one  of  Robertson's  own  stories  written  in  1866 
for  Tom  Hood's  Christmas  volume  Rates  and  Taxes, 
entitled  The  Poor  Rate  Unfolds  a  Tale.  The  source 
of  both  lies  in  simple  heroism,  in  love  of  a  man  for  a 
woman,  in  the  joy  of  return  after  absence,  in  the  Joys 
of  parenthood.  The  influence  of  Thackeray  is  clear. 
Fairfax  Daubray  of  the  tale,  who  becomes  George 
D'Alroy  in  the  play,  is  in  his  adoration  for  Alma  like 
George  in  Vanity  Fair  in  his  love  for  Amelia.  Through- 
out the  play  is  shown  the  bungling  spirit  of  careless 
heroism.  Frederick  Younge,  who  played  D'Alroy, 
first  played  in  the  Thackerayan  manner  as  a  heavy, 
stupid  fellow.  Clement  Scott  tells  us  that  Robertson's 
favorite  bit  in  Vanity  Fair  was  the  picture  of  Amelia 
praying  during  the  Battle  of  Waterloo  for  George,  who 
that  moment  was  lying  dead  with  a  bullet  through  his 


ADAPTATION  AND  EXPERIMENT  47 

heart,  and  he  goes  on :  "  We  seem  in  Caste  to  be  reading 
of  Becky,  and  Jos,  and  Amelia,  and  George,  and  Dob- 
bin, not  of  Polly  and  D'Alroy,  and  Hawtree,  and 
Esther." 

Robertson  was  now  a  successful  dramatist  supplying 
plays  to  two  or  three  London  theatres  at  a  time.  His 
drama.  Play,  presented  at  the  Prince  of  Wales's  Theatre 
February  15,  1868,  was  the  outgrowth  of  his  travels 
and  his  interest  in  Germany.  As  his  art  proceeded, 
the  author  became  interested  in  the  more  delicate 
gradations  of  character  as  represented  by  the  variations 
of  national  type  and  the  elusive  personalities  of  young 
people  and  children.  In  Ours,  one  of  his  best  char- 
acters was  that  of  the  Russian,  Prince  Perovsky.  In 
Play  we  have  some  charming  pictures  of  Baden,  and  a 
love  scene  famous  among  the  scenes  of  this  master  of 
delicate  romance.  School,  produced  January  16,  1869, 
was  the  most  successful  of  Robertson's  plays ;  at  the 
first  production  running  to  three  hundred  and  eighty- 
one  nights.  The  outline  of  the  plot  was  derived  from 
the  Aschenbrodel  of  Roderick  Benedix.  This  play  was 
something  of  a  tour  de  force,  in  that  the  entire  psy- 
chology of  the  play  is  schoolgirl  psychology.  Perhaps 
never  before,  certainly  not  in  the  nineteenth  century, 
has  a  play  for  adults  been  constructed  out  of  the  play- 
ful, elusive,  but  immature  materials  of  girlish  character. 
That  the  author  succeeded  is  another  mark  of  his  con- 
summate skill  as  a  craftsman,  but  the  play  contains  no 
traits  that  would  endow  it  with  long  life.  In  these 
later  plays  the  characteristics  of  the  author  are  develop- 
ing to  their  extreme.    All  of  his  last  plays  are  spun  out 


48   THE  CONTEMPORA.RY  DRAMA  OF  ENGLAND 

of  some  mood  or  a  delicate  piece  of  fancy.  Through 
them  all  goes  his  tenderness  in  romance,  his  admiration 
of  the  simple  heroic  virtues,  and  his  satire  on  the  foibles 
of  the  new  commercial  classes.  His  later  plays,  M.  P., 
Home,  Dreams,  were  presented  before  enthusiastic 
audiences.  With  War  his  vogue  was  broken.  After 
his  death  his  plays  continued  to  be  produced  at  the 
Prince  of  Wales's  Theatre,  and  when  the  Bancrofts 
moved  to  the  Haymarket  they  took  them  along,  play- 
ing them  in  all  over  three  thousand  times.  There 
were  some  signs  that  these  plays  would  be  elevated 
into  a  distinct  school  of  playwriting.  But  when  the 
author  died  this  expectation  ceased.  In  his  particular 
line  Robertson  could  have  no  successor,  but  there  is 
no  English  dramatist  from  Gilbert  to  Barrie  who  is  not 
the  better  for  his  pioneering. 


CHAPTER  IV 

Toward  a  New  English  Theatre 

While  playwrights  were  creating  a  new  style  of 
play  others  were  remaking  the  theatre  itself.  First 
among  these  were  Marie  Wilton-Bancroft  and  her 
husband,  Squire  Bancroft  Bancroft.  Marie  Wilton 
(born  1840)  in  youth  played  boy's  parts  in  burlesque. 
In  1858  she  made  her  appearance  in  the  Strand  Theatre 
under  direction  of  Miss  Swanborough  in  burlesques 
written  by  H.  J.  Byron.  Of  Marie  Wilton  in  her 
Strand  days  Dickens  wrote  to  Forster:  "I  call  her 
the  cleverest  girl  I  have  ever  seen  on  the  stage  in  my 
time,  and  the  most  singularly  original." 

But  Marie  Wilton  was  more  than  a  vivacious  and 
graceful  actress.  She  was  a  courageous  and  far-seeing 
manager,  whose  vision  was  equaled  by  her  judgment. 
In  1864  she  joined  H.  J.  Byron  in  the  management  of 
the  little  theatre  in  Tottenham  Court  Road,  which 
under  permission  from  the  Court  they  called  the  Prince 
of  Wales's  Theatre.  This  venture  has  more  than 
ordinary  significance  in  the  development  of  the  modern 
theatre.  In  the  first  place  it  was  a  step  away  from 
the  narrow  interests  of   the  fashionable  West   End. 

49 


50   THE  CONTEMPORARY  DRAMA  OF  ENGLAND 

In  size  the  theatre  adapted  itself  to  the  new  standards 
of  play.  With  the  passing  of  the  play  of  magnified 
emotions  there  passed  as  well  the  vogue  of  the  great 
playhouse.  The  Prince  of  Wales's  Theatre  was  made 
homelike  and  comfortable.  Upon  the  stage  of  this 
theatre  the  first  steps  were  made  toward  a  new  code 
of  acting  and  management. 

The  accomplishments  of  the  Bancrofts  are  to  be 
credited  to  their  own  genius  as  conductors,  to  their 
encouragement  of  the  influence  of  Robertson,  and  to 
their  careful  study  of  the  systems  of  management  of 
the  great  French  theatres.  From  the  first  they  set 
themselves  to  the  creation  of  an  eflBcient  stock  company 
that  should  adapt  itself  flexibly  to  the  new  comedy. 
Mrs.  Bancroft  often  played  in  her  own  company  second 
to  such  players  as  Mme.  Modjeska,  Ellen  Terry,  Mrs. 
John  Wood,  and  Mrs.  Kendal.  The  Bancrofts  did 
not  discourage  long  runs,  but  they  made  it  a  practice 
always  to  withdraw  a  play  at  the  height  of  its  popu- 
larity in  order  that  its  vitality  might  be  retained  for 
revival.  The  new  management  started  the  custom  of 
paying  actors  well  and  protecting  them  in  their  dig- 
nity as  artists.  In  production  a  code  of  complete  and 
tasteful  realism  was  inaugurated.  The  furniture  was 
carefully  selected.  The  women  were  carefully  gowned, 
the  men  arrayed  by  the  West  End  tailor.  Make-up 
was  taken  out  of  the  region  of  caricature  and  made  an 
art.  Of  the  high  standards  of  this  company  in  pro- 
duction The  AtheruBum  speaks,  May  18,  1872:  "No 
attempt  is  made  by  any  one  of  its  members  to  eclipse 
his  fellows,  or  to  monopolize  either  the  space  on  the 


TOWARD  A  NEW  ENGLISH  THEATRE  51 

boards,  or  the  attention  of  the  audience.  No  piece  is 
presented  in  such  a  state  of  unpreparedness  that  the 
first  dozen  performances  are  no  better  than  rehearsals ; 
no  slovenHness  in  the  less  important  accessories  of  the 
play  is  permitted." 

Something  of  this  rigorous  standard  of  production 
is  due  to  the  influence  of  Robertson.  Bancroft  tells  in 
his  Recollections  about  the  pains  this  author  took  to  have 
his  "somewhat  novel  type  of  characters  understood 
and  acted  as  he  wished."  And  both  W.  S.  Gilbert 
and  John  Hare  have  given  testimony  to  the  value  of 
Robertson's  methods.  Gilbert  writes:  "I  frequently 
attended  his  rehearsals  and  learnt  a  great  deal  from 
his  method  of  stage-management,  which  in  those  days 
was  quite  a  novelty,  although  most  pieces  are  now 
stage-managed  on  the  principles  he  introduced.  I 
look  upon  stage-management,  as  now  understood,  as 
having  been  absolutely  'invented'  by  him."  And 
John  Hare  says :  "  My  opinion  of  Robertson  as  a 
stage  manager  is  of  the  very  highest.  He  had  a  gift 
peculiar  to  himself,  and  which  I  have  never  seen  in 
any  other  author,  of  conveying  by  some  rapid  and 
almost  electrical  suggestion  to  the  actor  an  insight 
into  the  character  assigned  to  him.  As  nature  was 
the  basis  of  his  own  work,  so  he  sought  to  make  actors 
understand  it  should  be  theirs.  He  thus  founded  a 
school  of  natural  acting  which  completely  revolution- 
ized the  then  existing  methods,  and  by  so  doing  did 
incalculable  good  to  the  stage." 

An  important  feature  of  the  Bancroft  management 
was  the  encouragement  given  to  English  dramatists. 


52   THE  CONTEMPORARY  DRAMA  OP  ENGLAND 

In  addition  to  Robertson  they  introduced  Wilkie  Collins 
to  the  stage  in  Man  and  Wife  (1873),  and  played  Gil- 
bert's Sweethearts  (1874),  and  the  first  ambitious  play 
of  the  young  Pinero,  Lords  and  Commons  (1883).  Of 
the  new  play  they  demanded  a  standard  approximate 
to  their  own.  When  good  new  plays  were  not  avail- 
able they  returned  to  the  old  English  comedies :  School 
for  Scandal,  The  Rivals,  Money,  London  Assurance, 
Masks  and  Faces. 

Quite  as  important  as  the  internal  accomplishments 
of  this  company  is  the  influence  it  had  as  a  school  of 
drama.  Audiences,  critics,  writers,  and  actors  bene- 
fited by  its  stimulating  example.  There  was  hardly 
a  leading  actor  of  the  new  school  of  drama  of  the  end 
of  the  century  who  had  not  been  associated  with  this 
company.  Among  the  men  and  women  who  at  differ- 
ent times  were  members  of  the  Bancroft  company 
were  Charles  Wyndham,  Arthur  Cecil,  Lydia  Foote, 
David  James,  C.  F.  Coghlan,  H.  B.  Conway,  John 
Clayton,  John  Hare,  W.  Terriss,  Kyrle  Bellew,  Ellen 
Terry,  Mrs.  John  Wood,  Forbes-Robertson,  Mr.  and 
Mrs.  Kendal. 

When  in  1885  the  two  managers,  still  young,  closed 
their  tenancy  of  the  Haymarket,  which  they  had 
taken  in  1879,  it  was  to  the  chorus  of  the  first  unquali- 
fied approval  that  had  greeted  the  new  English  theatre. 
Clement  Scott  said  for  them  that  the  seeds  of  all  that 
is  systematic  and  wholesome  on  the  "modern  stage 
were  sown  at  the  Prince  of  Wales's  Theatre  by  this 
actor  and  actress,  who,  though  they  retire  in  the  prime 
of  life,  were  chiefly  instrumental  in  restoring  order 


TOWARD  A   NEW  ENGLISH  THEATRE  53 

and  symmetry  out  of  chaos  and  confusion."  And  A. 
W.  Pinero  is  of  the  same  mind  in  writing  to  Squire 
Bancroft.  "It  is  my  opinion,  expressed  here  as  it  is 
elsewhere,  that  the  present  advanced  condition  of 
the  EngUsh  stage  —  throwing  as  it  does  a  clear,  nat- 
ural light  upon  the  manner  and  life  of  the  people, 
where  a  few  years  ago  there  was  nothing  but  moulding 
and  tinsel  —  is  due  to  the  crusade  begun  by  Mrs. 
Bancroft  and  yourself  in  your  little  Prince  of  Wales's 
Theatre.  When  the  history  of  the  stage  and  its 
progress  is  adequately  and  faithfully  written,  Mrs. 
Bancroft's  name  and  your  own  must  be  recorded  with 
honor  and  gratitude." 

In  the  early  seventies  there  were  some  signs  of 
improvement  in  the  theatre.  English  authors  were 
encouraged  to  hope  for  production.  Actors  were  on 
a  better  standing.  The  styles  of  the  theatres  were 
improved.  Great  houses  arose,  each  one  associated 
with  a  particular  manager.  In  the  eighties  the  Ly- 
ceum was  associated  with  Irving;  the  Haymarket 
under  the  Bancrofts  became  the  home  of  comedy; 
the  St.  James  became  the  home  of  the  second  English 
company  of  actors  under  the  direction  of  Mr.  and 
Mrs.  Kendal;  John  Hare  went  to  the  Court;  and 
Charles  Wyndham  took  the  Criterion.  Now  the 
actor-manager  had  his  opportunity.  Melodrama  and 
spectacular  drama  were  in  the  hands  of  their  business 
managers,  Harris  and  Hollingsworth,  but  the  Ban- 
crofts, the  Kendals,  Henry  Irving,  H.  B.  Tree,  E.  S. 
Willard,  Charles  Wyndham,  John  Hare  built  up  new 
traditions  of  the  artist  in  the  place  of  power.    The 


54   THE  CONTEMPORARY  DRAMA  OF  ENGLAND 

years  from  1865  to  1890  were  years  of  adjustment  of 
the  theatre  to  new  demands,  years  of  encom-agement 
to  native  authors,  and  the  building  of  new  theatres. 
There  were  faults  enough  and  dangers  and  discourage- 
ments. But  the  hopeful  feature  was  that  drama  was 
building  on  the  ground.  H.  A.  Jones  has  written 
that  the  one  real  contribution  of  this  period  was  the 
attempt  to  treat  the  realities  of  modern  life.  "All 
was  crude,  confused,  tentative,  aspiring.  But  there 
was  life  in  it." 

We  have  seen  that  Thomas  W.  Robertson  had  a 
leading  place  in  the  formation  of  the  company  of  the 
first  modern  English  theatre.  It  was  a  member  of 
the  Robertson  family  who  established  the  second  com- 
pany of  the  dramatic  revival.  Madge  Robertson  was 
the  youngest  child  in  the  family  of  which  T.  W.  Robert- 
son was  the  eldest.  Though  twenty  years  separate 
them  she  takes  her  place  with  him  as  a  clear-headed 
and  practical  reformer  of  the  stage.  She  created  the 
leading  part  in  Tom  Taylor's  and  A.  W.  Dubourg's 
New  Men  and  Old  Acres  (1859),  and,  after  marrying 
W.  H.  Kendal  at  the  age  of  twenty,  made  with  her 
husband  her  first  production  in  Gilbert's  The  Palace 
of  Truth  (1870).  Thereafter  the  Kendals  associated 
themselves  with  Gilbert  in  the  same  way  that  the  Ban- 
crofts had  attached  themselves  to  Robertson,  produc- 
ing Pygmalion  and  Galatea  (1871),  The  Wicked  World 
(1873),  Charity  (1874).  They  then  traveled  at  the 
head  of  the  Haymarket  repertory  in  As  You  Like  It, 
The  Rivals,  School  for  Scandal;  joined  Mr.  Hare  in 
a  period  of  management  of  the  Court  Theatre,  during 


TOWARD  A   NEW  ENGLISH  THEATRE  55 

which  they  gave  Gilbert's  Broken  Hearts  (1875) ;  ap- 
peared for  a  time  in  the  company  of  Mr.  and  Mrs. 
Bancroft ;  and  in  1879  began  their  most  brilliant  period 
when  they  joined  Hare  again  in  the  management  of  the 
St.  James's  Theatre.  This  theatre  the  new  managers 
made  an  immediate  success.  More  than  half  of  the 
Kendals'  thirty  productions  between  1875-1885  were 
from  the  French.  But  they  produced  several  new 
English  plays.  Aside  from  several  plays  by  Gilbert 
they  offered  Tennyson's  The  Falcon  (1879),  and  Pinero's 
Money  Syinner  (1881),  The  Squire  (1881),  The  Iron 
Master  (1884),  The  Hobby  Horse,  and  Mayfair,  from 
Sardou  (1885).  After  separating  from  Hare,  Mr.  and 
Mrs.  Kendal  made  their  first  separate  production  in 
Pinero's  The  Profligate  (1887).  The  Kendal  manage- 
ment became  famous  for  exquisite  judgment  and  dis- 
crimination in  settings  of  interiors.  Herself  the  most 
finished  actress  of  her  day,  Mrs.  Kendal's  mountings 
were  said  to  be  perfect.  A  Kendal  piece  came  to 
be  synonymous  with  "grace,  tenderness,  intelligence, 
well  arranged  accessories,  a  loyally  responsive  com- 
pany." 

Maintaining  the  traditions  of  the  best  acting  and 
management,  and  creating  new  standards  of  comedy 
and  refined  naturalism,  the  managements  of  John  Hare 
and  Charles  Wyndham  were  always  distinguished. 
Charles  Wyndham's  unflagging  spirit  and  clean  com- 
edy method  created  a  new  school  of  comedy  at  the 
Criterion  and  gave  early  recognition  to  the  powers  of 
H.  A.  Jones.  Though  an  excellent  manager,  John 
Hare  is  remembered  chiefly  as  an  actor.    From  the 


66  THE  CONTEMPORAKY  DRAMA  OF  ENGLAND 

time  that  he  played  Old  Ptarmigant  in  Society,  he  was 
recognized  as  having  supplied  a  new  idea  to  the  English 
stage.  It  was  that  of  the  stage  artist  in  miniature. 
Hare's  record  as  a  manager  is  marred  by  the  fact  that 
in  taking  over  the  Court  Theatre  in  1888  he  inaugurated 
it  as  a  one-man  star  theatre  rather  than  a  theatre  of 
associated  players  after  the  fashion  of  the  Prince  of 
Wales's  Theatre. 

Henry  Irving  did  not  render  service  to  the  new 
English  theatre  in  the  same  way  as  did  the  Bancrofts 
and  the  Kendals.  His  significance  attaches  to  his 
application  of  the  standards  of  the  past  to  the  condi- 
tions of  the  new  time.  By  grace  of  a  strong  personality, 
perhaps  because  he  represented  the  last  link  with  a 
venerated  tradition,  Henry  Irving  was  able  to  render 
tmique  service  to  the  modern  stage. 

Irving  was  the  last  great  representative  of  the  pro- 
vincial system  of  tuition.  Unlike  the  members  of  the 
Bancroft  company,  many  of  whom  came  to  the  metrop- 
olis with  slight  experience,  he  had  thoroughly  schooled 
himself  in  all  the  established  types  of  parts.  Twice 
he  turned  away  from  offers  to  come  to  London,  in 
order  to  return  to  his  provincial  circuits  for  further 
years  of  training.  When  finally  he  made  his  appear- 
ance in  London  in  1866,  he  was  equipped  as  few  actors 
have  been  since  the  eighteenth  century.  All  of  this 
equipment  was  in  the  line  of  the  romantic  or  sensa- 
tional and  eccentric  tradition.  His  first  recognition 
came  when  he  played  Digby  Grant  in  Albery's  Two 
Roses  in  1870.  His  reputation  was  increased  by  the 
manner  in  which  he  recited  The  Dream  of  Eugene  Aranif 


TOWARD  A  NEW  ENGLISH  THEATRE     57 

and  he  became  a  figure  of  first  magnitude  by  his  per- 
formance of  Mathias  in  The  Bells  (1871).  With  this 
play  Irving  began  his  career  in  the  Lyceum  under 
the  Batemans.  Thereafter  he  played  Charles  I  (1872) 
by  W.  G.  Wais,  Eugene  Aram  (1873),  Richelieu  (1874), 
Philiy  (1874),  Hamlet  (1874),  Macbeth  (1875),  Othello, 
Tennyson's  Quern  Mary  (1876),  Richard  III  (1877), 
The  Lyons  Mail  (1877),  Louis  XI  by  Delavigne,  and 
in  1878  he  became  sole  manager  of  the  Lyceum.  In 
the  same  year,  joined  by  Ellen  Terry,  he  began  the 
most  triumphant  career  in  the  history  of  the  modern 
English  stage,  playing  Hamlet,  The  Merchant  of  Venice, 
The  Corsican  Brothers,  Tennyson's  The  Cup,  Romeo  and 
Juliet,  Much  Ado  about  Nothing,  and  other  plays  of 
Shakespeare.  He  was  knighted  in  1895  and  died  in 
1905  at  the  height  of  his  fame. 

In  the  above  list  of  plays  may  be  seen  many  that 
seem  out  of  place  among  the  quieter  plays  of  the  natu- 
ralistic movement.  Indeed,  Irving's  repertory  looks 
more  like  that  of  a  Kean  of  the  middle  of  the  cen- 
tury than  that  of  a  leader  of  the  stage  of  the  end  of 
the  century.  It  must  be  granted  that  Irving  rendered 
no  direct  assistance  to  the  new  playwright.  Nor 
was  he  sympathetic  with  his  time  as  actor  and  pro- 
ducer. He  chose  only  melodramas  and  sensation 
dramas,  many  of  these  old  and  many  from  foreign 
sources.  He  supported  no  English  writer  who  was 
experimenting  on  new  genres.  His  main  dependence 
was  W.  G.  Wills.  He  gave  a  reverent  and  painstaking 
production  to  Tennyson's  The  Cup,  Queen  Mary,  and 
Becket.    But  he  was  not  a  man  to  experiment.    As  an 


58  THE  CONTEMPORARY  DRAMA  OF  ENGLAND 

actor  he  was  personal  and  eccentric.  He  made  no 
effort  to  study  the  surfaces  of  nature.  His  Digby 
Grant  compared  with  the  way  Hare  would  have  played 
such  a  part  is  a  cartoon  beside  an  etching.  Shake- 
speare he  played  after  the  school  of  Kean;  Hamlet 
in  an  ironic  and  studious  melancholy.  In  settings  also 
he  went  back  to  Kean,  lavishing  upon  his  Shakespeare 
the  most  astounding  expense,  halting  the  action  of 
the  part  with  lovely  pictures. 

And  yet  Henry  Irving's  career  was  a  tremendous 
service  to  the  theatre.  Perhaps  because  he  clung 
to  the  old  tradition  and  dignified  its  declining  days 
with  expensive  trappings,  because  he  respected  his 
art  too  much  to  experiment  with  it,  he  did  more  for 
the  English  stage  than  any  man  of  the  century.  He 
found  it  a  despised  art.  He  left  it  one  of  the  most 
respected  of  the  arts.  When  he  went  on  the  stage, 
men  of  the  theatre  were  bohemians  and  hangers-on 
of  Grub  Street.  He  was  the  first  of  many  to  be 
knighted.  He  spoke  before  universities  and  learned 
societies.  He  contributed  to  the  reviews  and  issued 
his  essays  and  lectures  in  book  form.  Other  men 
were  the  workers  in  the  new  English  theatre.  Irving 
was  its  statesman.  Like  Garrick  he  had  the  safe 
gift  of  conservatism,  one  of  the  most  necessary  on  a 
stage  in  which  the  gambler's  chance  is  supposed  to 
be  the  law  of  success.  "The  theatre  must  succeed 
as  a  business  if  it  is  to  succeed  as  an  art,"  he  often  said. 
In  himself  making  a  success  he  raised  the  whole  stand- 
ard of  the  profession.  He  helped  the  British  play- 
wright by  helping  the  British  stage.    He  was  one  of 


TOWARD  A  NEW  ENGLISH  THEATRE  59 

the  first  to  insist  upon  and  achieve  the  adjustment  of 
the  actor's  art  to  his  citizenship. 

We  have  now  to  consider  a  series  of  influences  from 
outside  the  theatre  and  in  some  cases  from  outside  the 
borders  of  the  nation  which  had  a  part  in  the  creation 
of  a  new  English  theatre.  In  1852  the  Court  had 
taken  cognizance  of  the  demand  for  a  better  stage 
by  appointing  Kean  to  take  charge  of  the  Windsor 
theatricals.  A  few  of  the  more  thoughtful  writers  of 
the  time  were  beginning  to  make  suggestions  toward  a 
reorganization  of  the  theatre.  Charles  Kent,  in  his 
Charles  Dickens  as  a  Reader,  quotes  Dickens  as  saying 
that  one  of  his  cherished  day-dreams  was  "to  settle 
down  for  the  remainder  of  my  life  within  easy  distance 
of  a  great  theatre,  in  the  direction  of  which  I  should 
hold  supreme  authority.  It  should  be  a  house,  of 
course,  having  a  skilled  and  noble  company,  and  one 
in  every  way  magnificently  appointed."  This  dream 
of  Dickens',  a  reflection  of  a  similar  dream  long  held 
by  Goethe,  showed  that  some  men  saw  a  vision  of  a 
new  theatre  more  adequately  representing  the  nation. 
In  the  minds  of  other  men,  critics  and  scholars,  not- 
ably George  Henry  Lewes  and  Henry  Morley,  there 
was  the  same  dream.  George  Henry  Lewes  was  a 
grandson  of  an  actor  and  was  himself  ambitious  to 
act.  As  dramatic  critic  of  The  Leader  from  1850-1854 
he  had  written  in  a  style  not  unlike  that  of  George 
Bernard  Shaw.  Brilliant,  vivacious,  resolute  of  stand- 
ards, he  was  an  especially  harsh  critic  of  the  French 
carpentry  school  of  playwriting.  His  essays  on  the 
art  of  the  theatre  were  gathered  together  in  1878  under 


60   THE  CONTEMPORARY  DRAMA  OF  ENGLAND 

the  title  On  Actors  and  the  Art  of  Acting.  Another 
man  of  intellectual  gifts  who  wrote  on  the  theatre  was 
Professor  Henry  Morley,  who  in  1866  completed  the 
Journal  of  a  London  Playgoer,  an  invaluable  record 
of  laboratory  notes  on  the  state  of  the  theatre  in  the 
fifties  and  sixties,  not  published  until  1891.  His 
prologue  is  a  healthy,  keen  diagnosis  of  the  state  of  the 
Victorian  theatre.  He  calls  upon  the  educated  public 
to  take  the  patronage  of  drama  from  Doodle,  Dapper- 
wit,  and  Froth. 

Perhaps  the  first  suggestion  that  the  English  theatre 
was  not  occupying  its  proper  place  in  the  nation  fol- 
lowed the  visits  of  foreign  troupes  to  London.  During 
the  mid-century  there  was  a  change  of  attitude  on 
the  part  of  British  audiences  and  critics  toward  visiting 
companies.  Though  performances  of  French  and  Ger- 
man plays  by  visiting  companies  had  been  common, 
the  companies  had  not  always  been  well  treated.  In 
1848  the  company  of  the  Thedtre  Historique  was  hissed 
off  the  stage  of  Drury  Lane  when  playing  Monte 
Cristo.  In  1852-1853  Emil  Devrient  suffered  a  dubi- 
ous reception  when  playing  Hamlet  in  German.  But 
as  England  began  to  grope  toward  a  solution  of  her 
own  dramatic  problems,  there  came  a  change  in  atti- 
tude toward  the  visiting  companies.  Fechter  was 
warmly  welcomed  in  1860.  And  when,  in  1871,  the 
company  of  the  Com^die  Fran^aise  visited  England 
it  was  received  with  enthusiasm.  During  the  Com- 
mune a  company  of  fifteen  soci6taires  was  hastily 
organized  under  the  directorship  of  M.  Got  to  play 
at  the  Opera  Comique  in  the  Strand.    The  company 


TOWARD   A  NEW  ENGLISH  THEATRE  61 

played  with  few  stage  properties.  Tickets  were  sold 
by  subscription  as  in  France.  The  repertory  idea  was 
strictly  adhered  to,  no  play  being  played  more  than 
twice  in  succession.  On  account  of  the  small  company 
small  parts  were  taken  by  great  actors.  These  per- 
formances were  largely  attended,  particularly  by  artists 
and  people  of  the  theatre.  English  actors  and  critics 
were  attracted  by  the  finish  and  detail,  the  exquisite 
attention  given  to  nice  points  of  the  production. 

In  the  following  season  (1873)  Ristori  was  seen  at 
the  Opera  Comique,  and  beginning  with  1874  French 
companies  came  every  year  to  the  Gaiety.  The  second 
visit  of  the  Comedie  Fran^aise  was  more  noteworthy 
than  the  first.  It  occurred  in  1879  at  the  Gaiety 
Theatre  under  the  direction  of  Mr.  Hollingshead, 
who  had  managed  the  earlier  visit.  This  time  there 
was  the  full  company,  and  the  tour  was  triumphant. 
Criticism  had  prepared  the  way  by  showing  the  sig- 
nificance of  a  state  theatre,  and  by  supplying  criteria 
by  which  the  excellent  technique  of  the  company  could 
be  judged.  The  company  was  now  under  the  direction 
of  M.  Perrin.  In  the  company  were  M.  Got,  former 
director,  Favart,  Delaunay,  Aimee  Desclee  and  Sarah 
Bernhardt.  The  career  of  Sarah  Bernhardt  as  well 
as  a  new  era  in  the  English  theatre  may  be  said  to 
date  from  this  visit.  The  plays  produced  then  in- 
cluded some  examples  of  the  new  social  drama  of 
Augier  and  Dumas.  The  third  visit  of  the  ComSdie 
Fran^aise  occurred  in  1893  under  the  directorship  of 
M.  Jules  Claretie.  Outside  of  this  company  the 
Continental  troupe  which  had  the  most  influence  in 


62  THE  CONTEMPORARY  DRAMA  OF  ENGLAND 

England  was  the  German  troupe  of  the  Duke  of  Mei- 
ningen,  which  made  its  first  visit  to  England  in  the 
summer  of  1881. 

The  result  of  the  visit  of  the  company  of  the  Comedie 
Fran9aise  in  1879  was  to  awaken  thinkers  to  the 
responsibility  of  the  nation  towards  its  theatre.  The 
man  who  most  ejffectively  sounded  the  call  was  Mat- 
thew Arnold  in  an  article  on  The  French  Play  in  London 
published  in  The  Nineteenth  Century.  This  essay, 
later  published  in  Irish  Essays,  treats  the  problem 
of  the  theatre,  not  as  one  for  authors,  actors,  or  man- 
agers alone,  but  as  a  matter  involving  society  as  a 
whole.  Fired  by  the  art  of  the  great  players  from 
across  the  channel,  Arnold  quotes  Goethe :  "  God 
help  us,  and  enlighten  us  for  the  future;  that  we 
may  not  stand  in  our  own  way  so  much,  and  may  have 
clear  notions  of  the  consequences  of  things." 

He  inquires  into  the  place  the  theatre  has  taken  in 
French  society  and  concludes  that  England  must  learn 
to  use  her  theatre.  He  finds  that  interest  in  the  theatre 
as  a  social  institution  is  returning. 

"  We  are  at  the  end  of  a  period,"  he  writes,  "and  have 
to  deal  with  the  facts  and  symptoms  of  a  new  period 
on  which  we  are  entering ;  and  prominent  among  these 
fresh  facts  and  symptoms  is  the  irresistibility  of  the 
theatre.  .  .  ."  And  he  goes  on,  "  What  is  certain  is  that 
a  signal  change  is  coming  over  us,  and  that  it  has  already 
made  great  progress.  It  is  said  that  there  are  now 
forty  theatres  in  London.  Even  in  Edinburgh,  where 
in  old  times  a  single  theatre  maintained  itself  under 
protest,  there  are  now,  I  believe,  over  half  a  dozen. 
The  change  is  not  due  only  to  an  increased  liking  in 


TOWARD   A   NEW   ENGLISH   THEATKEJ  63 

the  upper  class  and  in  the  working  class  for  the  theatre. 
Their  liking  for  it  has  certainly  increased,  but  this  is 
not  enough  to  account  for  the  change.  The  attrac- 
tion of  the  theatre  begins  to  be  felt  again,  after  a  long 
interval  of  insensibility,  by  the  middle  class  also.  .  .  . 
The  human  spirit  has  a  vital  need,  as  we  say,  for 
conduct  and  religion;  but  it  has  the  need  also  for 
expansion,  for  intellect  and  knowledge,  for  beauty, 
for  social  life  and  manners.  The  revelation  of  these 
additional  needs  brings  the  middle  class  to  the 
theatre. 

"  The  revelation  was  indispensable,  the  needs  are  real, 
the  theatre  is  one  of  the  mightiest  means  of  satisfying 
them,  and  the  theatre,  therefore,  is  irresistible.  That 
conclusion  at  any  rate  we  may  take  for  certain.  But 
I  see  our  community  turning  to  the  theatre  with  eager- 
ness, and  finding  the  English  theatre  without  organiza- 
tion, or  purpose,  or  dignity,  and  no  modern  English 
drama  at  all  except  a  fantastical  one.  .  .  .  And  in 
this  condition  of  affairs  I  see  the  middle  class  beginning 
to  arrive  at  the  theatre  again  after  its  abstention  of 
two  centuries  and  more;  arriving  eager  and  curious, 
but  a  little  bewildered. 

"  What  are  we  to  learn  from  the  marvelous  success 
and  attractiveness  of  the  performances  at  the  Gaiety 
Theatre;  what  is  the  consequence  which  it  is  right 
and  national  for  us  to  draw  ?  Surely  it  is  this :  *  The 
theatre  is  irresistible ;   organize  the  theatre.' " 

Six  years  before  Arnold's  essay  on  the  theatre  there 
had  been  quietly  introduced  into  England  the  influ- 
ence of  a  man  who  for  thirty  years  thereafter  was  to 
be  a  storm  center  in  English  theatrical  affairs.  Ibsen's 
influence  struck  England  at  a  crucial  moment.  Through 
years  of  adaptation  and  experiment  the  English  theatre 


64   THE  CONTEMPORARY  DRAMA  OF  ENGLAND 

had  been  working  toward  new  forms.  Ibsen's  influence 
came  at  a  time  to  direct  this  movement  into  narrow 
channels.  On  such  a  man  as  Ibsen  it  was  necessary  to 
take  strong  position.  One  was  either  for  him  or  against 
him.  The  result  was  that  tendencies  which  were  native 
to  the  English  soil  were  in  some  measure  combined  with 
his  alien  influence.  Directly  his  influence  has  not  been 
great.  But  indirectly  and  during  a  formative  period 
of  English  drama  his  outlook  and  interests  took  a  pre- 
ponderant place  in  all  speculations  about  the  stage, 
and  had  a  strong  influence  on  the  temper  of  English 
dramatists. 

Edmund  Gosse  first  introduced  Ibsen  to  England 
through  an  article  in  The  Fortnightly  Review  for  1873 
in  which  he  treated  Ibsen  as  already  a  mature  man 
with  his  major  work  accomplished,  and  introduced  to 
English  readers  The  Comedy  of  Love,  Emperor  and 
Galilean,  Brand,  and  Peer  Gynt.  About  the  same 
time  William  Archer  became  acquainted  with  Ibsen 
and  made  himself  Ibsen's  English  sponsor,  a  posi- 
tion he  has  held  ever  since.  The  earliest  transla- 
tion of  an  Ibsen  play  was  Miss  Ray's  translation  of 
Emperor  and  Galilean  in  1876.  In  1879  the  British 
Scandinavian  Society  printed  extracts  from  Ibsen's 
work.  A  condensed  translation  by  William  Archer 
of  Pillars  of  Society  was  produced  in  a  morning  per- 
formance at  the  Gaiety  Theatre,  December,  1880. 
In  1882  Miss  H.  F.  Lord  translated  A  Doll's  House  as 
Nora.  The  same  play  was  adapted  by  Henry  Arthur 
Jones  and  Henry  Herman  as  Breaking  a  Butterfly 
(1884).    In  1886  Havelock  Ellis  published  Pillars  of 


TOWARD   A   NEW  ENGLISH   THEATRE  65 

Society,  Ghosts,  and  An  Enemy  of  the  People  in  the 
Camelot  Classics.  By  this  time  parties  began  to  form 
for  and  against  Ibsen.  Edmund  Gosse,  William  Archer, 
R.  Farquharson  Sharp,  A.  B.  Walkley,  and  later  George 
Bernard  Shaw  were  for  him.  The  older  order  of 
critics,  headed  by  Clement  Scott  and  Robert  Bu- 
chanan, were  against  him.  In  1891  occurred  the 
famous  Independent  Theatre  production  of  Ghosts, 
which  precipitated  the  modern  war  of  the  critics. 
In  1893  Beerbohm  Tree  produced  An  Enemy  of  the 
People  at  the  Haymarket  Theatre. 

English  dramatists  fought  hard  against  the  influence 
of  Ibsen.  Up  to  this  time  realism  had  been  a  theme  for 
critical  dispute,  but  few  traces  of  the  influence  of  Zola 
or  the  younger  Dumas  had  found  their  way  to  England. 
But  Ibsen's  was  a  force  that  could  not  be  denied. 
Though  the  dramatists  disavowed  his  influence  they 
studied  his  themes  and  imitated  his  methods.  Now 
comes  the  period  of  the  instrumental  drama.  The 
influence  of  Ibsen  made  English  drama  more  solid. 
Ibsen  had  the  virtue  that  the  English  dramatist  often 
lacked,  the  virtue  of  a  consistent  moral  substance 
that  goes  down  to  the  heart  of  humanity  and  repudiates 
all  tricks.  While  the  English  dramatist  could  not 
take  from  the  Frenchman  his  metallic  structure,  he 
could  take  the  softened  symbols  of  an  intellectual 
realism  from  the  Norwegian.  Ibsen's  art  is  full  of 
the  moral  reflections  of  the  inner  life.  This  the  Eng- 
lish dramatist  took  and  magnified  to  a  cruder  purpose- 
fulness.  He  took  as  well  Ibsen's  predilection  for  the 
study  of  sex  psychology.    There  follows  a  generation 


66   THE  CONTEMPORARY  DRAMA  OF  ENGLAND 

in  which  the  sex  play  obsesses  the  stage,  constructed 
by  super-serious  men  out  of  ill-digested  materials  for 
an  audience  quite  lacking  in  Gallic  salt. 

All  these  activities  within  and  without  the  theatre 
gave  to  the  eighties  something  of  an  air  of  a  dramatic 
revival.  Percy  Fitzgerald,  Moy  Thomas,  Button 
Cook,  Clement  Scott  raised  criticism  to  new  levels. 
Books  begin  to  appear  on  the  contemporary  theatre. 
In  1882  appeared  William  Archer's  English  Drama- 
tists of  To-day.  Four  years  later  Archer  published 
About  the  Theatre.  Magazines  increased  the  space 
given  to  theatrical  interests.  The  Athenaeum  had  a 
department  of  drama  from  its  start  in  1882.  The 
Saturday  Review  called  G.  B.  S.  to  write  dramatic 
criticism,  and  a  few  years  later  Shaw  was  succeeded 
by  Max  Beerbohm.  The  Fortnightly  Review,  under 
the  editorship  of  Frank  Harris,  began  a  series  of  articles 
on  drama  that  have  made  this  Review  a  chronicle  of 
the  history  of  the  modern  dramatic  movement.  In 
1880  there  were  established  The  Theatre  and  The  Jour- 
nal of  Dramatic  Reform.  The  interest  that  was  shown 
in  print  was  reflected  in  new  organizations  for  the  sup- 
port of  a  better  drama.  In  1882  a  meeting  was  held 
at  the  Lyceum  Theatre  for  the  discussion  of  a  pro- 
posed "School  of  Dramatic  Art"  for  England.  In 
the  same  year,  under  the  direction  of  Herbert  Beerbohm 
Tree,  the  Costume  Society  was  established  to  encour- 
age archaeological  correctness  in  costuming.  In  1884 
the  Oxford  Dramatic  Society  was  organized.  Learned 
societies  began  to  open  their  doors  to  those  who  spoke 
for  the  stage.    In  1884  Mrs.  Kendal  read  a  paper 


TOWARD  A  NEW  ENGLISH  THEATRE  67 

before  the  Social  Science  Congress  on  The  Drama. 
In  1888  Archer  lectured  on  The  Modern  Drama  before 
the  Royal  Institution.  Henry  Irving  was  in  frequent 
demand  before  universities  and  academies.  The  time 
seemed  to  be  ripe  for  a  new  drama. 


CHAPTER  V 
Dramatists  of  Transition 

The  delicate  machine  of  the  Robertsonian  play  did 
not  long  survive  the  death  of  the  dramatist  who  origi- 
nated it.  The  importance  of  Robertson  lies  in  the 
fact  that  he  gave  the  theatre  a  bias  toward  artistry 
and  truth,  and  not  that  he  offered  a  formula  acceptable 
for  English  drama.  Of  the  twenty-one  dramatists 
treated  in  Archer's  English  Dramatists  of  To-day  (1882), 
Westland  Marston,  Lord  Lytton,  T.  W.  Robertson, 
Charles  Reade,  and  Dion  Boucicault  belonged  to  a 
past  age.  James  Albery,  F.  C.  Burnand,  H.  J.  Byron 
were  doing  nothing  that  had  not  been  tried  before. 
Herman  C.  Merivale,  W.  G.  Wills,  Paul  Merritt,  and 
George  R.  Sims  were  writers  of  sensational  plays  and 
melodrama.  Only  W.  S.  Gilbert,  Sydney  Grundy, 
H.  A.  Jones,  and  A.  W.  Pinero  were  doing  work  of  a 
kind  that  promised  to  grow  to  greater  value. 

Dramatists  were  still  timid.  The  way  to  fame  still 
led  through  the  dramatized  novel  and  melodrama. 
Old  plays  were  rewritten;  the  novels  of  Fielding, 
Goldsmith,  Scott,  Thackeray,  and  Dickens  were  dram- 
atized.   Melodrama  increased  in  popularity  and  was 

68 


DRAMATISTS  OP  TRANSITION  69 

transferred  from  the  Victoria  and  Grecian  theatres  to 
the  Adelphi,  Drury  Lane,  and  Haymarket.  It  came  to 
emphasize  more  the  claims  of  justice  and  the  rights  of 
the  poor.  It  called  invention  to  its  aid  and  used  the 
new  machinery  and  common  haunts  of  city  life  —  ma- 
chine shops,  railroad  trains,  balloons,  dock  yards,  coal 
mines,  lifeboats.  These  melodramas  were  not  entirely 
vicious.  There  was  a  crude  truth  in  them,  an  insist- 
ence upon  reality  and  the  social  bond.  Of  the  dra- 
matists of  the  eighties  all  save  Pinero  had  been 
tutored  in  melodrama.  Among^  the  great  melodramas 
were  Sims's  The  Lights  o*  London  (1881),  Sims's  and 
Pettitt's  The  Harbour  Lights  (1886),  Paul  Merritt's 
and  Henry  Pettitt's  great  Drury  Lane  spectacle  The 
World  (1884),  and  H.  A.  Jones's  The  Silver  King  (1882). 
In  Wilson  Barrett's  The  Sign  of  the  Cross  (1895)  melo- 
drama reached  its  climax. 

Little  need  be  said  of  the  minor  dramatists  of  the 
decade.  In  his  later  years  H.  J.  Byron  falsified  the 
"cup  and  saucer"  play  in  the  thin  plot  and  strained 
situations  of  CyriVs  Success  (1868)  and  Our  Boys 
(1875).  His  Wrinkles  (1876),  played  by  Mr.  and  Mrs. 
Bancroft,  had  better  material  in  it  but  was  unsuccessful 
with  the  audience.  James  Albery  (1838-1889)  was 
a  man  of  imagination  who  scattered  his  efforts.  In 
Pink  Dominoes  (1877),  from  the  French  of  Hennequin 
and  Delacour,  he  provided  one  of  the  wittiest  of  naughty 
farces,  in  Oriana  (1873)  one  of  the  most  beautiful 
of  fairy  plays,  and  in  Two  Roses  (1870)  the  vehicle 
by  which  Henry  Irving  had  his  first  success  with  the 
public.     W.  G.  Wills   (1828-1891),  Irish   dramatist, 


70  THE  CONTEMPORARY  DRAMA  OF  ENGLAND 

journalist,  and  portrait  painter,  after  1872  dramatist 
of  the  Lyceum  Theatre  under  Bateman,  tried  to  bring 
back  the  horrors  of  the  Gothic  school.  He  adapted 
Media  in  Corinth  from  Euripides  into  bad  blank  verse, 
provided  Irving  one  of  his  worst  parts  in  Charles  I 
(1872),  and  in  Juana  gave  Madame  Modjeska  a 
play  of  renunciation  and  madness.  His  Claudian, 
Princess's  Theatre  (1883),  was  a  nine  days'  wonder. 
In  two  of  his  adaptations,  Jane  Eyre  (1882),  and  Olivia 
(1885)  from  Goldsmith's  novel.  The  Vicar  of  Wake- 
field, Wills  is  at  his  best. 

H.  C.  Merivale  (1839-1906)  always  adapted  or  col- 
laborated. Like  Wills  and  Albery  he  was  searching  for 
a  method,  which  he  never  found.  Perhaps  his  best 
work  was  in  the  melodrama.  The  White  Pilgrim  (1883), 
from  a  legend  by  Gilbert  k  Beckett,  and  Forget-me-not 
(1879).  Like  his  fellows,  Merivale  was  guilty  of 
some  astounding  lapses  of  tact.  Among  these  are  his 
modernizations  of  Faust  under  the  title  The  Cynic 
(1882)  and  Wilhelm  Meister's  Apprenticeship  under  the 
title  The  Lord  of  the  Manor  (1880). 

Demanding  a  little  more  serious  consideration  is 
Robert  Buchanan  (1841-1901).  Before  he  began 
to  write  for  the  stage  Buchanan  was  the  writer  of 
novels,  verse,  and  criticism.  He  is  now  chiefly  remem- 
bered for  his  attack  on  Rossetti  and  the  pre-Raphaelites 
in  his  essay  on  The  Fleshly  School  of  Poetry  (1871),  an 
offense  for  which  he  tried  later  to  atone.  He  began 
to  write  for  the  stage  in  1880  in  A  Nine  Days'  Queen,  a 
pathetic  treatment  of  Lady  Jane  Grey  in  blank  verse. 
He  dramatized  his  own  novels.   The  Shadow  of  the 


DRAMATISTS  OP  TRANSITION  71 

Sword  (1881)  and  God  and  the  Man,  the  latter  as  Storm- 
beaten  (1883).  While  writing  other  melodramas  with 
G.  R.  Sims  he  turned  again  to  adaptation.  From  his 
adaptation  of  Lady  Clare  (1885),  from  George  Ohnet's 
Le  Maitre  de  Forges,  he  gained  some  notoriety  on  ac- 
count of  a  conflict  of  rights  with  Pinero.  He  adapted 
Sophia  (1886)  and  Joseph's  Sweetheart  (1888)  from 
Fielding's  Tom  Jones  and  Joseph  Andrews;  adapted 
Clarissa  Harlowe;  Miss  Tomboy  (1890)  from  Van- 
brugh's  Relapse;  The  Sixth  Commandment  (1890)  from 
Dostoyevsky's  Crime  and  Punishment.  Arthur  Symons 
called  Buchanan  a  soldier  of  fortune,  who  wrote  always 
for  the  market,  his  criticism  a  kind  of  fighting  journal- 
ism: "like  most  fighters  he  fought  because  he  could 
not  think." 

We  now  come  to  consider  the  work  of  two  men  of 
higher  rank.  Both  W.  S.  Gilbert  and  Sydney  Grundy 
were  dominated  throughout  their  lives  by  the  desire 
to  do  the  better  things.  Yet  there  is  upon  the  work 
of  both  these  men  the  sign  of  perplexity.  Only  Gil- 
bert works  out  of  doubt  into  an  acceptable  medium. 
This  perplexity  was  characteristic  of  all  of  the  work 
of  the  theatre  of  the  period.  They  were  few  indeed 
who,  like  Irving  and  the  Bancrofts,  found  a  stable 
platform  upon  which  to  do  their  best  work.  Of  the 
two  chief  dramatists  of  the  transition  period,  Gilbert 
found  his  way  into  musical  fantasy  and  remained  there. 
Sydney  Grundy,  in  many  respects  the  precursor  of 
the  later  writers  of  serious  drama,  displayed  an  early 
ambition  beyond  his  time,  but  failed  to  grow  with  his 
time. 


72   THE  CONTEMPORARY  DRAMA  OF  ENGLAND 

Wmiam  Schwenck  Gilbert  (183&-1911),  a  Bachelor 
of  Arts  of  London  University,  and  barrister  at  law  at 
twenty-two,  was  a  descendant  of  Sir  Humphrey  Gil- 
bert and  son  of  William  Gilbert,  a  man  of  strong 
personality,  a  surgeon  and  a  novelist.  Like  many 
other  playwrights  of  the  century  he  got  his  start 
on  the  stage  by  way  of  burlesque  and  service  on  the 
comic  papers.  Not  successful  with  Punch,  in  1861 
he  joined  H.  J.  Byron's  magazine,  Fun,  and  contrib- 
uted to  it  hundreds  of  columns  of  verse  and  satire. 
His  Bab  Ballads  (1869)  and  More  Bab  Ballads  (1873) 
first  brought  him  fame.  Having  been  asked  by  Miss 
Herbert  of  the  St.  James's  Theatre  for  a  Christmas 
piece  in  a  fortnight,  Gilbert  wrote  in  ten  days  a  biu*- 
lesque  on  VElisir  d'Amore,  entitled  Dulcamara;  or, 
The  Little  Duck  and  the  Great  Quack.  The  success  of 
this  piece  led  to  a  burlesque  on  La  Figlia  del  Reggi- 
mento  entitled  La  Vivandidre  for  J.  L.  Toole,  which 
ran  for  one  hundred  and  twenty  nights  at  the  Queen's 
Theatre,  one  on  The  Bohemian  Girl  entitled  Merry 
Zingara  and  a  burlesque  of  Robert  the  Devil  for  Miss 
Nellie  Farren.  All  these  were  successful.  Having 
been  determined  for  some  time  "to  try  the  experiment 
of  a  blank-verse  burlesque  in  which  a  picturesque 
story  should  be  told  in  a  strain  of  mock  heroic  serious- 
ness," he  undertook  to  treat  Tennyson's  Princess  with- 
out "willful  irreverence."  The  piece,  produced  at 
the  Olympic  (1870),  was  an  instant  success.  It  was 
followed  by  an  adaptation,  under  the  title  The  Pal- 
ace of  Truth,  of  Madame  le  Genlis's  story  Le  Palais 
de  la  Verite,  a  subject  suggested  to  Gilbert  by  Mr. 


DRA.MATISTS  OF  TRANSITION  73 

Palgrave  Simpson.  With  this  play,  produced  at  the 
Haymarket  with  Mr.  Buckstone  in  the  cast,  his  real 
career  began.  Thereafter  he  wrote  all  kinds  of  plays, 
comedies,  farces,  melodramas,  social  dramas,  verse 
tragedies,  absurdities,  writing  under  his  own  name 
and  the  pseudonym  of  F.  L.  Tomline.  Even  after 
Trial  by  Jury  had  opened  up  his  richest  vein  of  success 
in  musical  comedy,  Gilbert  continued  to  attempt  to 
write  serious  plays.  His  last  play.  The  Hooligan,  is 
a  sordid  tragedy  far  removed  from  the  delicate  fantasy 
of  his  Savoy  operas. 

There  can  be  seen  in  Gilbert's  work  as  a  whole  signs 
of  indecision.  The  wielder  of  one  of  the  most  subtle 
forms  of  popular  dramatic  art,  Gilbert  was  never  able 
to  rest  upon  his  main  achievements  with  security. 
Men  were  impatient  of  the  thing  the  times  most 
needed  in  the  theatre  —  the  gift  of  personality,  the 
contribution  of  an  individual  outlook.  A  stage  author 
was  expected  to  satisfy  the  standards  of  the  past,  to 
cut  his  cloth  by  outworn  patterns.  He  was  by  no 
means  encouraged  to  discover  and  to  give  himself. 
Meanwhile  all  the  serious  temptations  were  in  the 
direction  of  conventional  comedy  and  verse  plays. 
It  was  not  until  Gilbert  had  essayed  these  and  found 
them  changing  under  his  hand  to  the  form  of  his  own 
personal  gift  that  his  work  came  to  display  the  marks 
of  the  master. 

When  Gilbert  began  to  write  the  musical  play, 
this  form  held  an  even  lower  position  than  it  holds 
to-day.  The  Christmas  pantomimes  and  burlesque 
had  collapsed.    The  fairy  play  had  seen  its  day  and 


74  THE  CONTEMPORARY  DRAMA  OF  ENGLAND 

was  confused  with  the  tricks  of  extravaganza.  All 
the  available  legends  had  been  debased  to  the  uses  of 
the  ballet  and  the  three-act  burlesque.  The  Offenbach 
operas  with  Meilhac  and  Halevy  librettos  had  never 
found  an  appropriate  place  in  England.  French  opera 
bouffe  reached  its  height  in  England  with  Le  Consent 
(1870) ;  La  Belle  HeUne  (1871  and  1873) ;  Fabcappa 
{Les  Brigands)  (1871) ;  Madame  rArchiduc  (1876), 
witty  but  alien  entertainments  of  no  real  significance. 

What  was  that  gift  of  personality  which  after  many 
experiments  Gilbert  was  to  make  to  the  stage?  By 
many  this  gift  is  said  to  lie  in  Gilbert's  tendency  to 
see  life  in  a  topsy-turvy  way.  This  is  a  superficial 
explanation  of  his  genius.  Gilbert  was  no  mere  handler 
of  mental  shockers.  His  contribution  was  a  specific 
that  cleared  the  air  of  lingering  but  moribund  ideas, 
that  settled  the  odors  of  yesterday's  feasts  of  reason 
and  soul.  He  had  a  renovating  imagination.  Hardly 
a  satirist,  for  he  did  not  attack  or  even  point  a  meaning, 
he  simply  provided  a  new  atmosphere  and  a  new  light. 

The  renovating  quality  of  Gilbert's  .genius  was 
closely  associated  with  his  aesthetic  sensibilities.  All 
the  positions  he  took  were  the  result  of  artistic  judg- 
ments. As  he  happened  to  be  dealing  with  the  ma- 
terials of  a  frayed  and  tattered  stage,  many  of  Gil- 
bert's aesthetic  judgments  were  reactions  against  false 
standards  in  art.  He  expresses  in  his  art  Pater's 
dictum,  "The  way  to  perfection  is  through  a  series 
of  disgusts."  Nothing  was  more  common  than  bur- 
lesque on  the  stage.  Little  was  left  to  be  accom- 
plished by  mere  exaggeration  and  incongruity.     Gil- 


DRAMATISTS   OF  TRANSITION  75 

bert  subjected  everything,  particularly  the  formulas  of 
art,  to  the  judgment  of  a  cheerful  taste.  He  added 
silvery  laughter  to  satire.  Executioners,  pirates, 
death,  bridegrooms,  kings,  aesthetes,  fairy  lovers 
received  the  same  sunny  critical  regard  without  im- 
proper emphasis  and  without  distortion. 

The  one  thing  against  which  Gilbert's  taste  turned 
with  unerring  force  was  the,  convention  of  literary 
love.  From  the  first  Gilbert  had  shown  himself 
incapable  of  dealing  sympathetically  with  the  themes 
of  the  heart.  In  Broken  Hearts,  in  Gretchen  he  had 
tried  to  tell  love  stories,  but  the  result  is  metallic 
and  forced.  When  he  came  to  his  operas  he  played 
upon  every  string  of  affection  save  that  of  pure  feel- 
ing. His  reaction  against  the  romantic  theme  was 
strengthened  by  the  fact  that  real  love  was  ceasing 
to  subject  itself  to  expression  under  the  methods  of 
sentiment.  Love  had  been  shown  by  the  analysts  in 
fiction  to  involve  other  things,  passions,  problems, 
inhibitions,  for  which  the  romantic  method  had  no 
expression.  Sweethearts,  one  of  the  best  of  Gilbert's 
plays,  is  successful  because  the  love  shown  is  silent, 
forgetful,  and  cruel.  He  ends  his  operas  with  a  brace 
of  matings  lightly  engaged  in ;  throughout  their  action 
couples  exchange  easily.  All  love  is  but  the  material 
of  laughter. 

Gilbert's  earliest  plays  are  concerned  with  the 
search  for  truth  in  a  world  of  false  shows.  First  he 
tries  to  reveal  it  by  turning  the  world  upside  down. 
An  early  play  was  entitled  Topsyturvydom  (1874). 
He  soon  discards  the  topsy-turvy  method  for  the 


76  THE  CONTEMPORARY  DRAMA  OF  ENGLAND 

deeper  search  for  the  truth  that  is  involved  but  hidden 
in  all  things.  Throughout  his  life  it  was  his  passion 
to  find  the  hidden  principle  behind  the  surfaces  of 
life.  He  makes  this  effort  in  The  Palace  of  Truth,  in 
Engaged,  in  Pygmalion  and  Galatea,  in  Broken  Hearts, 
in  The  Wicked  World.  He  uses  all  the  formulas  by 
which  the  older  story-tellers  resolved  the  dualism  of 
existence,  enchanted  islands,  palaces  of  truth,  fairy 
correspondences,  the  elixir  dropped  in  the  eye,  the 
statue  coming  to  life.  All  these  expedients  are  palpable 
enough.  Indeed,  they  hardly  satisfy  Coleridge's  de- 
mand for  the  arbitrary  suspension  of  disbelief,  so  ap- 
parent are  their  methods,  so  little  do  they  surprise 
us  into  a  sudden  accession  of  sight. 

When  Gilbert  comes  to  his  later  work  and  drops 
the  topsy-turvy  principle,  he  drops  as  well  the  machin- 
ery by  which  he  justifies  his  search.  And  he  makes 
the  search  self-justifying.  He  now  becomes  less 
didactic,  less  fearful  that  truth  will  elude  him,  less 
convinced  that  it  is  necessary  that  he  shall  see  it  in 
order  to  be  sure  of  its  existence.  Truth  whether  of 
the  taste  or  the  mind  eludes  the  sterner  searchings. 
But  it  responds  to  the  lighter  fancy.  And  it  was 
fancy  pure  and  simple  that  Gilbert  brings  to  his  later 
plays.  His  whimsies  werfe  not  vagaries,  not  paradoxes, 
not  mere  cheap  quips.  The  Savoy  operas,  even  apart 
from  their  music,  come  nearer  to  the  adequate  adjust- 
ment of  form  to  sense  than  any  other  work  written 
for  the  theatre  in  their  period. 

Before  Gilbert  came  to  command  of  his  mode,  he 
busied  himself  imitating  other  men  and  attempting 


DRAMATISTS  OF  TRANSITION  77 

to  force  his  art  into  uncongenial  molds.  Of  the  short 
plays  written  for  Miss  Marie  Lytton's  management 
of  the  Court  Theatre,  1871,  the  most  that  need  be 
said  is  that  they  lacked  distinction.  In  Charity  (1874) 
he  deals  with  a  serious  theme.  It  is  a  story  that 
has  a  strong  foretaste  of  the  temper  of  H.  A.  Jones, 
with  a  sufficient  complement  of  lost  papers,  exposures, 
counter  exposures,  and  puns  from  the  scrip  of  H.  J. 
Byron.  Dan'l  Druce,  Blacksmith  (1876)  is  a  melo- 
drama with  nautical  leanings  on  a  theme  suggested 
by  George  Eliot's  Silas  Mamer.  Nothing  distin- 
guishes this  from  the  ordinary  melodrama  with  the 
exception  of  the  knack  shown  for  the  handling  of 
archaic  atmosphere.  Gilbert  continued  to  write  thrill- 
ers even  after  the  great  success  of  his  operas.  Comedy 
and  Tragedy,  written  for  Miss  Mary  Anderson  and 
played  at  the  Lyceum  Theatre,  1884,  is  a  well-made 
"strong  scene"  play  of  one  act,  of  a  pattern  directly 
imported  from  France.  Some  of  the  most  surprising 
lapses  of  Gilbert's  taste  are  seen  in  his  adaptations 
of  the  work  of  other  poets.  For  Gretchen  (1879),  an 
adaptation  of  Goethe's  Faust,  Gilbert  did  not  even 
have  the  excuse  of  burlesque.  Nor  is  there  any  more 
excuse  for  his  Rosencrantz  and  Guildenstem. 

Of  Gilbert's  prose  plays  three  stand  out  for  especial 
consideration.  All  proceed  from  an  attitude  of  thor- 
ough disillusion  in  matters  of  life  and  art.  The  best 
of  these  is  Sweethearts  (Prince  of  Wales's,  1874).  This 
play  has  been  so  often  misrepresented  on  the  stage  as 
a  sentimental  play,  that  one  is  likely  to  forget  that  it 
is  based  upon  an  ironic  view  of  human  nature  and  a 


78  THE  CONTEMPORARY  DRAMA  OF  ENGLAND 

thorough  determination  not  to  surrender  to  romantic 
tricks.  The  play  develops  from  the  refusal  of  a  young 
man  and  a  young  woman  to  express  their  love.  Al- 
most entirely  without  intrigue,  the  play  depends  upon 
the  natural  emotions,  the  bashfulness  of  love  that 
could  not  speak,  a  young  girl's  unconscious  cruelty  of 
coquetry,  and  the  later  cruelty  of  forgetfulness  on 
the  part  of  the  man.  As  a  background  for  the  action 
there  is  the  spirit  of  time  and  growth  —  difficult  things 
to  put  into  dramatic  form  —  which  is  symbolized 
by  the  growing  sycamore,  and  the  aggregations  of 
semi-detached  villas  about  the  old  house. 

Tom  Cohb;  or,  Fortune's  Toy,  a  farcical  comedy 
(1875),  can  be  compared  with  nothing  so  well  as  with 
a  Shavian  comedy.  A  borrowing  Irishman,  impecu- 
nious surgeons,  a  heroine  turned  nine-and-twenty, 
and  a  feminine  aesthete  are  the  chief  characters.  Ma- 
tilda's love  affairs  are  used  by  her  father  as  sources 
of  loans,  and  Caroline  Effingham  is  as  keen  to  secure 
a  poet  for  an  ideal  lover  as  she  is  to  secure  a  financial 
arrangement  in  a  case  of  breach  of  promise.  Most 
of  the  characters  are  given  to  large  talk.  The  plot 
is  based  without  defense  on  the  vagaries  of  nonsense. 
And  everything  on  earth  is  travestied,  —  love,  the 
theatre,  affectations  of  refinement  in  art,  doctors,  Irish- 
men, and  soldiers. 

Engaged,  produced  at  the  Haymarket  Theatre 
(1877),  is  a  melodramatic  farce  made  up  of  train 
wrecks,  elopements  to  Gretna  Green,  and  legacies 
left  on  hard  conditions.  None  of  the  characters  is 
misled  by  an  emotion  or  a  principle.    All  understand 


DRAMATISTS   OF  TRANSITION  79 

each  other.  The  play  shreds  to  pieces  the  clap-trap 
of  stage  romantic  love.  Vows  are  exchanged  in  cold 
reckoning.  Affections  are  transferred  as  interest  dic- 
tates. Cheviot  Hill  is  of  the  family  of  Shaw's  hard, 
conscienceless  heroes.  "I  never  loved  three  girls  as 
I  loved  those  three,"  he  says.  And  Matilda  goes  him 
one  better.  Like  Shaw's  self-confident  heroines  she 
has  worked  out  the  budget  of  her  life.  "  If  you  would 
be  truly  happy  in  the  married  state  be  sure  you  have 
your  own  way  in  everything.  Brook  no  contradic- 
tions. Never  yield  to  outside  pressure.  Give  in 
to  no  argument.  Admit  no  appeal.  However  wrong 
you  may  be,  maintain  a  firm,  resolute,  and  determined 
front."  These  plays  were  relatively  successful  on  the 
stage  on  account  of  their  daring  lines  and  quick  action. 
But  the  audiences  did  not  understand  them.  The  plays 
were  as  hard  as  adamant.  The  revelation  of  human 
nature  was  so  acerbant  as  to  amount  to  exposure. 

We  come  now  to  four  verse  plays  which  by  use  of 
a  formal  or  traditional  machinery  illustrate  Gilbert's 
search  for  the  truth  under  the  appearances  of  things. 
These  four  are  The  Palace  of  Truth  (1870),  Pygmalion 
and  Galatea  (1871),  The  Wicked  World  (1873),  and 
Broken  Hearts  (1875).  All  are  in  blank  verse.  All 
depend  upon  a  dualism  as  between  the  world  of  reality 
and  the  world  of  illusion  in  which  we  live.  All  save 
Pygmalion  and  Galatea  are  fairy  plays.  The  Palace  of 
Truth  is  a  blank-verse  fairy  comedy  based  on  a  French 
original.  Pygmalion  and  Galatea  is  based  upon  the 
classical  story  of  the  statue  which  is  so  loved  by  its 
sculptor  that  it  comes  to  life.      The  Wicked  World 


80  THE  CONTEMPORARY  DRAMA  OF  ENGLAND 

was  derived  from  a  story  contributed  by  Gilbert  to 
Hood's  Annual,  in  which  the  idea  of  duality  of  life  is 
illustrated  by  creating  a  fairy  world*corresponding  to  the 
real  world.  The  action  takes  place  in  the  fairy  world 
where  the  female  fairies  call  to  the  heavens  the  earthly 
counterparts  of  the  male  fairies.  Gilbert  burlesqued 
his  own  Wicked  World  under  the  title  The  Happy 
Land  (1873).  Broken  Hearts  is  an  intrigue  play, 
borrowing  the  machinery  and  form  of  a  fairy 
play.  It  is  dominated  by  the  figure  of  a  deformed 
dwarf,  Mousta.  The  most  beautiful  touch  in  the 
play  is  the  fancy  which  makes  women  who  have  lost 
the  love  of  man  take  up  the  love  of  sundial  and  foun- 
tain and  mirror. 

Though  these  plays  had  a  certain  vogue  none  of 
them  was  altogether  successful.  The  blank  verse 
in  which  they  were  written  was  not  flexible  enough 
for  the  demands  of  pure  fancy;  moreover,  Gilbert 
had  not  yet  learned  how  to  handle  his  machinery  of 
the  fable.  Nothing  in  the  plays  suggests  anything 
other  than  a  formal  convention  and  yet  we  are  asked 
to  transport  the  mind  to  supernatural  regions.  Gal- 
atea's lapses  from  innocence  to  a  cockney  sophisti- 
cation might  be  funny  if  she  had  indeed  come  to  life 
in  a  no-man's  land  either  of  stone  or  flesh.  But  they 
are  simply  vulgar  considering  that  we  are  sure  that 
she  has  never  been  stone  at  all,  that  she  is  a  girl  of 
the  time  demanding  of  us  a  self-deception  we  cannot 
practice.  And  yet  there  was  something  in  these  plays 
the  stage  had  not  had  before.  It  was  more  than  the 
gift  of  a  fresh  personality.    It  was  the  gift  of  an  out- 


DRAMATISTS   OF  TRANSITION  81 

look  which  was  honestly  concerned  with  evaluating 
life.  We  shall  see  by  what  means  in  his  next  group 
Gilbert  achieves  the  fitting  form. 

Gilbert  had  first  met  Arthur  Sullivan  in  1871,  but 
beyond  a  single  burlesque,  Thespis;  or,  The  Gods  from 
Old,  the  two  did  no  work  together  until  Trial  by  Jury 
in  1875.  Then  began  the  association  that  was  to 
continue  almost  without  break  until  the  death  of 
Sullivan.  The  first  significance  of  the  Savoy  operas 
lies  in  the  fact  that  Gilbert  resolutely  discards  the 
outworn  legends  out  of  which  the  extravaganzas  had 
been  made.  He  creates  his  stories  of  commonplace 
materials  which  he  endows  with  the  qualities  of  fancy. 
After  The  Sorcerer,  his  second  opera,  he  also  discards 
the  machinery  of  convention.  There  are  no  more 
enchanted  regions,  philters,  or  veils  of  illusion.  When 
one  steps  into  the  theatre  it  is  to  meet  real  men  and 
women  who  move  about  in  a  new  lyrical  and  fanciful 
air.  These  people  appear  in  their  own  dimensions 
but  without  the  limitations  of  the  commonplace.  Gil- 
bert's stories  center  in  the  established  institutions, 
the  respected  phantoms  of  the  world,  the  dignitaries, 
admirals,  peers,  pirates,  brigands,  even  the  ghosts  of 
historic  castles.  His  fantasy  was  not  a  cutting  off 
from  the  world.  It  was  the  application  of  a  point  of 
view  to  the  world.  There  is  neither  impatience  nor 
sorrow  nor  tragedy  in  this  lyrical  laughter  region. 
Under  the  author's  light  touch  come  death  and  bribes, 
the  loss  of  loved  ones,  and  all  pass  off  with  a  smile. 
When  the  Mikado  hears  that  his  son  has  been  beheaded, 
he  says,  "Dear,  dear,  this  is  very  tiresome." 


82   THE  CONTEMPORARY  DRAMA  OF  ENGLAND. 

These  themes  of  fancy  are  couched  in  a  construction 
as  careful  as  the  most  rigorous  tragedy.  Gilbert 
studied  the  design  of  his  operas  with  care.  Unlike 
many  comic  operas  the  stoty  is  perfectly  articulate. 
The  lyrics  and  chorus  are  parts  of  the  play.  Not  a 
line  is  wasted ;  not  a  lyric  is  dragged  in  for  a  purpose 
outside  the  structure.  The  lyrics  themselves  are 
remarkable  for  metrical  and  rhyming  originality. 
More  than  this,  they  are  all  dramatic. 

Trial  by  Jury  (1875),  written  with  side  hints  on  the 
famous  Tichborne  trial  engaging  interest  at  the  time, 
was  so  successful  that  it  led  to  the  production  of  The 
Sorcerer  at  the  Opera  Comique  in  1877  and  the  begin- 
ning of  the  Gilbert  and  Sullivan  vogue.  In  The 
Sorcerer  Gilbert  uses  for  the  last  time  a  conventional 
expedient  for  the  creation  of  his  convention  of  inner 
sight.  For  this  purpose  he  here  uses  the  Midsummer 
Night's  Dream  instrument  of  a  love  philter  for  break- 
ing up  social  groups  in  the  mating  of  the  sexes.  In 
this  also  occurs  Gilbert's  favorite  jest,  used  again  in 
The  Mikado,  of  the  bartering  of  life.  With  the  next 
play,  H.  M.  S.  Pinafore;  or,  The  Lass  that  Loved  a  Sailor 
(1878),  Gilbert  comes  out  of  his  experimental  stage. 
This  play  treats  fantastically  England's  pride  in  her 
Royal  Navy.  In  it  again  the  distinctions  of  birth, 
the  power  of  love  to  level  ranks,  the  call  of  duty,  the 
thrill  of  patriotism,  the  fear  of  death  are  playfully 
treated.  The  Pirates  of  Penzance;  or,  The  Slave  of 
Duty  was  produced  in  New  York  in  1879,  while  Gil- 
bert was  visiting  America,  and  transferred  to  London 
in  the  next  year.     Into  the  world  of  pirates  is  intro- 


DRAMATISTS   OF  TRANSITION  83 

duced  a  system  of  morality,  a  sense  of  duty  and  law 
that  throw  oblique  rays  on  both  law  and  pirates.  As 
Gilbert's  constructive  imagination  becomes  more  flex- 
ible his  easy  fun  in  lyric  manipulation  and  rhyming 
increases. 

Qscar  Wilde,  while  still  a  student  at  Oxford,  at- 
tracted much  attention  to  the  new  sestheticism.  The 
affections  of  men  and  women  turned  away  from  sol- 
diers and  manly  sports  to  poets  and  artists.  Gilbert's 
next  play,  Patience;  or,  Bunthorne's  Bride  (1881),  was 
dedicated  to  the  two  artistic  schools  represented  by 
the  two  poets,  Reginald  Bunthorne,  a  Fleshly  Poet, 
and  Archibald  Grosvenor,  an  Idyllic  Poet.  Nothing 
more  delicious  has  been  seen  on  the  stage  than  those 
scenes  of  "aesthetic  transfiguration",  in  which  the 
welter  of  influences  of  Florentine  fourteenth  century, 
the  Venetian,  the  Japanese,  the  Early  English  blue 
china,  is  depicted.  The  languid  love  for  lilies  and 
lank  limbs,  the  haggard  cheeks  of  pre-Raphaelitism 
are  ridiculed  gracefully  and  without  offense.  Delight- 
ful is  Sophia's  cry,  "You  are  not  Empyrean.  You 
are  not  Delia  Cruscan.  You  are  not  even  Early  Eng- 
lish. Oh,  be  Early  English,  ere  it  is  too  late."  In 
satiric  conception  as  well  as  in  design  and  in  lyrical 
expression,  this  opera  is  perfect. 

With  the  next  opera,  lolanthe;  or,  The  Peer  and  the 
Peri  (1882),  the  Gilbert  and  Sullivan  operas  were 
transferred  to  the  new  Savoy  Opera  House.  This 
play  treats  again  the  dangerous  subjects  of  England's 
dignity  and  the  majesty  of  law.  The  play  delightfully 
shows  a  Lord  Chancellor  married  to  a  fairy  and  mem- 


84  THE  CONTEMPORARY  DRAMA  OF  ENGLAND 

bers  of  the  House  of  Lords  singing  their  discussions. 
Contemporary  critics  claimed  to  see  in  it  a  serious 
note  of  protest  for  the  poor,  a  moral  mingling  with 
the  buffoonry.  It  is.  certain  that  the  serious  social 
interests  of  the  day  may  have  provided  the  author 
a  point  of  departure,  but  critics  showed  their  inability 
to  understand  Gilbert's  work  when  they  ascribed  to 
him  a  note  of  pathos  amounting  to  anger.  In  this 
play  for  the  first  time  electricity  was  used  in  lighting 
the  figures  of  the  fairies  by  means  of  storage  batteries 
on  their  backs. 

Princess  Ida;  or,  Castle  Adamant  (1884),  is  a  revision 
of  The  Princess  presented  in  1870,  and  a  "respectful 
operatic  perversion"  of  Tennyson's  poem.  One  of  the 
daintiest  of  the  Savoy  operas,  it  lacks  the  lightness  of 
fancy  that  others  possessed.  But  such  signs  of  fatigue 
as  critics  saw  in  this  play  were  quickly  dispelled  by  the 
next  of  the  series.  In  The  Mikado;  or,  The  Town  of 
Titipu  (presented  March  14,  1885)  we  have  a  work 
to  place  beside  Patience  as  the  two  perfect  works  from 
Gilbert's  pen.  The  poet  had  already  satirized  the 
Japanese  influence.  Here  he  was  to  appropriate  it 
and  transfigure  it.  In  this  the  vein  of  refined  nonsense 
is  pushed  to  the  limits  of  genius.  The  situation  is 
pursued  to  its  most  remote  illogical  conclusion.  Yet 
the  story  never  for  a  moment  escapes  the  author. 
The  characters  of  Ko-Ko,  of  Pooh-Bah,  of  Nanki-Poo, 
and  the  three  charming  sprites.  Yum  Yum,  Pitti  Sing, 
and  Peep-Bo,  are  universal  poetry  and  fantasy.  One 
may  find  in  this  all  the  commentaries  on  things  in  gen- 
eral he  chooses  to  find.    Or  if  he  wishes  he  may  see  in 


DRA.MATISTS   OF  TRANSITION  85 

it  simply  a  work  of  fanciful  genius  created  out  of  a 
new  fabric. 

Ruddigore;  or,  The  Witch's  Curse  (1887),  a  super- 
natural opera  of  mortals  and  ghosts,  uses  more  stage 
tricks  than  are  usual  in  Gilbert's  work.  For  this  reason 
the  play  is  not  as  general  in  value,  though  its  immediate 
appeal  was  very  great.  The  central  idea  threw  more 
than  a  side  light  on  some  of  the  popular  legends  of  the 
theatre.  The  Yeomen  of  the  Guard;  or,  The  Merry  man 
and  his  Maid  (1888)  again  jests  with  death  and  deals 
in  a  spirit  of  historic  fantasy  with  a  tale  of  heroism. 
The  whole  play  is  like  an  elaborated  ballad.  Indeed 
few  modern  ballads  can  excel  Fairfax's  song,  "Is  Life 
a  Boon?"  In  The  Gondoliers;  or.  The  King  of  Bara- 
taria  (1889)  as  in  The  Yeomen  of  the  Gvurd,  Gilbert 
takes  a  romantic  conception  of  mistaken  identity, 
and  plays  upon  this  with  modern  business  ideas,  and 
shows  majesty  in  workaday  attire.  The  Mountebanks 
(1892),  with  music  by  Alfred  Cellier,  marks  a  tempo- 
rary separation  between  Gilbert  and  Sullivan.  This 
play  treats  the  collapse  of  the  outlaw  business.  Tech- 
nically it  is  chiefly  noteworthy  for  its  use  of  puppets. 
In  Utopia,  Limited;  or.  The  Flowers  of  Progress  (1893) 
Gilbert  and  Sullivan  joined  again.  The  play  deals 
with  an  ideal  land,  "a  Despotism  tempered  with 
Dynamite"  which  should  realize  the  dreams  of  the 
reformers.  Limited  monarchs,  joint  stock  companies, 
modern  sociological  lectures,  government  by  party, 
reform  of  the  drama  are  all  adverted  to.  With  this 
the  series  of  Savoy  operas  came  to  an  end.  Save  for 
His  Excellency  (1894),  with  music  composed  by  Doctor 


86   THE  CONTEMPORARY  DRAMA  OF  ENGLAND 

Osmond  Carr,  and  The  Grand  Duke  (1896),  Gilbert 
wrote  no  more  operas.  The  vein  which  he  had  so 
diligently  mined  had  thinned.  Though  he  continued 
to  try  his  hand  at  playwriting  the  new  activities  of 
the  nineties  were  strange  to  him.     He  died  in  1911. 

The  indebtedness  of  the  stage  to  W.  S.  Gilbert  can 
be  appreciated  only  by  one  who  recognizes  the  serious 
undercurrent  of  his  humor.  "All  humor  properly  so 
called  is  based  upon  a  grave  and  quasi-respectful  treat- 
ment of  the  ludicrous  ",  he  writes.  Properly  considered, 
Gilbert  was  a  serious  man,  and  his  true  tone  is  that  of 
grace  and  urbanity  rather  than  of  jest.  In  addition 
to  the  debt  owed  to  him  as  an  author  the  theatre  owes 
much  to  Gilbert  for  his  rigorous  standards,  his  firm 
insistence  upon  the  rights  of  an  author  over  a  produc- 
tion, and  his  point-device  artistry  in  play  construc- 
tion and  stage  management. 

In  Gilbert  we  have  a  man  who  worked  his  way 
through  experiment  and  indecision  into  a  method. 
In  Sydney  Grundy  we  have  a  man,  perhaps  no  less 
honest,  though  certainly  less  gifted  and  adroit,  who  in 
spite  of  successive  attempts  still  found  himself  turned 
back,  beaten.  Sydney  Grundy  was  not  a  great  play- 
wright. But  he  was  ambitious,  honest,  industrious, 
bitten  with  the  itch  of  perfection.  He  had  an  artistic 
conscience.  And  he  had  enough  of  a  social  conscience 
to  make  him  wish  to  adapt  the  stage  to  the  time. 
And  yet  his  life  falls  into  two  unhappy  periods.  In 
the  first  he  was  too  early;  in  the  second  he  was  too 
late.  He  lacked  the  flexibility  to  adapt  himself  to 
the  age.    Grundy  once  wrote  of  Sims:    "Among  his 


DRAMATISTS  OP  TRANSITION  87 

many  wonderful  qualities,  none  is  so  marvelous  as  his 
Protean  capacity  for  adapting  himself  to  his  oppor- 
tunities. He  never  attempts  to  alter  circumstances; 
he  patiently  lets  circumstances  alter  him."  This 
ability  that  he  finds  in  Sims,  Grundy  did  not  possess. 
He  is  always  fighting  his  time  or  falling  outside  of  it. 

Born  in  1848  and  well  educated,  Grundy  is  the  last 
of  the  adapters^  By  1882  he  was  considered  by  Archer 
one  of  the  most  promising  of  English  dramatists.  His 
first  play,  A  Little  Change,  was  produced  by  Mr.  and 
Mrs.  Kendal  at  the  Haymarket  (1872).  His  adapta- 
tions, many  of  which  were  highly  successful,  include 
After  Long  Years  (1879)  from  Scribe;  The  Snowball 
(1879)  from  Oscar,  ou  le  mari  qui  trompe  sa  femme  by 
Scribe  and  Duvergne;  In  Honour  Bound  (1880)  from 
Scribe's  Une  Chaine;  A  Pair  of  Spectacles  (1890)  from 
Les  Petits  Oiseaux  by  Labiche  and  Delacour ;  three  adap- 
tations from  Alexandre  Dumas,  pere ;  Frocks  and  Frills 
(1902)  from  Les  Droits  de  fees  by  Scribe  and  Legouve ; 
Business  is  Business  (1905)  from  Octave  Mirbeau's 
Les  Affaires  sont  les  affaires;  The  Diplomatists  (1905) 
from  La  Poudre  aux  yeux  by  Labiche.  As  adapter  of 
these  plays,  Grundy  deserves  more  than  the  credit 
that  goes  to  the  purveyor.  He  was  the  entrepreneur 
between  France  and  England.  In  The  Snowball  he 
introduced  much  of  that  ingenuity  in  high  comedy 
that  Pinero  has  represented  in  his  best  work.  In 
In  Honour  Bound,  the  story  of  a  husband  wittily  and 
pointedly  cross-examining  a  young  man  who  has  been 
the  lover  of  his  wife,  while  the  new  fiancee  stands  ready 
to  enter  the  room,  we  have  the  theme  of  The  Profligate 


88  THE  CONTEMPORARY  DRAMA  OP  ENGLAND 

and  The  Second  Mrs.  Tanqueray.  A  Pair  of  Spectacles 
was  one  of  the  most  popular  plays  of  the  generation. 
In  Mammon  (1877),  from  Feuillet's  Mont  joy  e,  he  gives 
us  one  of  the  first  financiers  of  modern  drama.  Sir 
Geoffrey  Heriott  is  a  true  business  man  who  is  really 
concerned  in  business  rather  than  a  romantic  figure 
playing  with  affairs.  This  interest  in  business  and 
practical  matters  comes  out  again  in  Business  is  Busi- 
ness and  in  The  Glass  of  Fashion. 

As  an  original  dramatist  Grundy  set  himself  to  learn 
the  lessons  of  his  masters.  His  dialogue  was  crisp, 
straightforward,  expository,  lacking  in  puns  and  word 
play,  polished  to  a  needle  fineness.  It  was  meticulous 
beyond  the  standards  of  speech  or  of  writing.  A 
critic  has  said  that  he  wrote  all  his  plays  with  a  pencil 
sharpened  to  a  fine  point.  The  point  was  so  sharp 
that  it  was  brittle.  From  Grundy's  study  of  his 
French  models  there  came  his  technique  of  the  down- 
ward sweep  in  construction.  The  play  begins  at  its 
highest  point,  and  the  whole  progress  is  toward  catas- 
trophe at  the  end.  This  type,  which  had  been  prac- 
tised by  Scribe  and  Dumas  and  Meilhac  and  Hal  Ivy, 
had  been  introduced  into  England  in  Frou-Frou 
(1870)  and  in  a  version  of  Camille  (1880).  Grundy 
very  early  attempts  to  introduce  the  unhappy  ending 
of  death  into  his  adaptations  and  original  plays.  This 
he  does  in  A  Bunch  of  Violets  and  A  FooVs  Paradise^ 
and  Pinero  and  Jones  do  the  same  after  him,  but  no  one 
has  succeeded  in  making  the  English  audience  accept 
the  climacteric  death. 

In  his  own  playwriting  Grundy  was  dominated  by  a 


DRAMATISTS   OF  TRANSITION  89 

moral  motive.  He  attempted  to  combine  the  technique 
of  Scribe  with  the  moral  intensity  of  a  Norwegian 
or  a  German  dramatist.  So  though  his  plays  are  well 
constructed,  their  excellence  has  little  to  do  with  ob- 
servation of  real  life.  The  Glass  of  Fashion  (1883) 
is  a  newspaper  play  dealing  with  the  follies  and  cor- 
ruption of  society.  The  Dean's  Daughter  (1888)  lashes 
aristocratic  failings,  and  the  worldliness  of  the  church. 
A  Fool's  Paradise  (1889),  acted  as  The  Mousetrap  in 
America,  is  a  strong,  consistent  story  of  a  flirt  who 
tries  to  put  her  husband  out  of  the  way  in  behalf  of 
a  fatal  love  she  has  for  another.  Grundy's  gift  of  cjmi- 
cism  is  shown  in  the  ending  of  the  play.  When  dis- 
covered in  her  designs  Mousie  takes  the  poison  herself 
and,  with  a  cool  "Good  night  to  all  of  you",  goes  out 
to  die.  In  Sowing  the  Wind  (1893)  we  have  a  story  of 
illegitimate  children;  in  The  Old  Jew  (1894)  and  The 
New  Woman  (1894)  veracious  characters  are  set  in  im- 
possible situations.  Grundy  continued  to  write  plays 
until  well  into  the  new  century.  Later  plays  were 
Slaves  of  the  Ring  (1894),  The  Greatest  of  These  (1895), 
The  Degenerates  (1899),  and  A  Debt  of  Honour  (1900). 
While  Grundy  had  the  will  to  truth,  he  had  not  the 
insight  of  truth.  His  themes  are  all  themes  of  the 
theatre.  He  was  a  good  workman,  but  he  failed  be- 
cause he  was  neither  artist  nor  thinker. 


CHAPTER  VI 
Henry  Arthur  Jones 

In  Grundy  we  see  the  modern  dramatist  accepting 
the  challenge  of  his  environment  and  defeated  by  it. 
In  Henry  Arthur  Jones  we  have  the  first  example  of  a 
dramatist  who  secures  a  measure  of  success  by  fighting 
his  environment.  Following  Matthew  Arnold,  Jones 
recognized  that  the  problem  of  the  theatre  lies  in  the 
hearts  and  wills  of  men.  All  his  energy  has  been  used 
in  an  appeal  to  men's  hearts  and  wills  for  the  building 
of  a  better  theatre. 

Henry  Arthur  Jones,  born  at  Grandborough,  Bucks, 
in  1851,  received  a  common  school  education.  His 
first  play,  Only  Round  the  Corner,  was  produced  at 
Exeter  in  1878.  This  was  followed  by  several  one-act 
plays,  of  which  A  Clerical  Error  (1879)  was  the  first 
produced  in  London.  Jones's  first  long  plays,  all  of 
melodramatic  order,  were  written  in  collaboration  with 
Henry  Herman  or  Wilson  Barrett.  His  first  success 
came  with  the  melodrama.  The  Silver  King  (1882). 
With  Saints  and  Sinners  (1884)  he  set  the  note  for 
much  of  his  later  work,  and  with  Judah  (1890)  he 
emerged  into  the  first  rank  of  British  dramatists. 

90 


HENRY  ARTHUR  JONES  91 

As  early  as  1882  Archer  recognized  Jones  for  his 
"earnestness  of  purpose"  and  four  years  later  stated 
that  it  was  his  desire,  "according  to  his  lights,  to 
produce  good  work;  and  he  strives  after  other  lights 
than  the  footlights." 

From  the  start  Jones  had  upon  him  the  council  of 
good  works.  He  was  one  of  the  first  to  realize  the 
potency  of  the  play  in  social  reform.  As  a  dramatist 
he  seldom  lets  slip  an  opportunity  to  pass  judgment 
on  his  fellows.  This  social-mindedness  which  he  dis- 
plays as  a  playwright  characterizes  all  his  thinking 
on  the  theatre.  His  first  production  in  London  had 
taken  place  the  year  in  which  Arnold  had  sounded  his 
clarion,  "The  theatre  is  irresistible;  organize  the 
theatre."  Thenceforward  Jones  devoted  himself  to 
this  cause.  Jones  became  a  propagandist  for  the 
theatre  in  the  same  spirit  in  which  Ruskin  and  Morris 
had  become  propagandists  for  art.  He  saw  the  social 
obligation  of  the  dramatist,  the  social  possibilities  of 
the  play,  and  he  saw  too  that  these  obligations  and 
opportunities  were  violated  by  the  condition  of  the 
theatre  in  his  time.  He  proceeded  to  make  appeal  on 
behalf  of  the  theatre  to  the  only  powers  that  could 
bring  forth  a  new  theatre,  the  minds  and  the  hearts  of 
the  people  themselves. 

The  dramatist  set  himself  to  the  solution  of  two 
problems  in  the  organization  of  the  theatre.  The  first 
of  these  is  the  ofiicial  problem  and  has  to  do  with  the 
relationship  between  the  theatre  and  the  State.  The 
second  is  the  social  problem  and  has  to  do  with  the 
building  of  a  theatre  in  the  midst  of  the  new  society 


92  THE  CONTEMPORARY  DRAMA  OF  ENGLAND 

of  the  world.  Of  these  two  the  first  is  far  less  impor- 
tant than  the  second  and  more  simple  to  handle.  It 
is  concerned  with  such  matters  as  copyright  protection, 
the  licensing  of  theatres,  the  censorship,  and  projects 
of  national  support.  The  problems  of  copyright  and 
music  hall  license  were  satisfactorily  solved.  Only  the 
censorship  and  the  problem  of  the  national  theatre  are 
left  to  vex  the  dramatist.  But  the  unofficial  and  social 
situation  presents  a  permanent  problem  of  increasing 
difficulty. 

More  vigorous  and  captious  than  the  censorship  of 
the  king's  reader  of  plays,  is  the  censorship  of  the 
English  audience.  Mrs.  Grundy,  sitting  in  the  pit 
of  an  English  theatre,  wields  the  final  power  over  the 
dramatist's  work.  And  the  pit  is  no  ready  listener  to 
any  direct  appeal,  to  any  rational  statement  of  the 
issues.  Jones  set  himself  first  to  find  out  what  laws, 
if  any,  underlie  the  reactions  of  the  public  toward  a 
play,  and  then  to  raise  the  standard  of  those  laws  by 
direct  appeal. 

In  endeavoring  to  reach  the  ear  and  mind  of  the  au- 
dience, Jones  has  used  all  the  channels  of  publicity.  He 
indulged  in  an  advertising  campaign  in  behalf  of  good 
plays.  In  this  spirit  he  helped  to  establish  the  Play- 
goers Club  in  1884,  wrote  articles  in  The  Nineteenth 
Century  and  the  New  Review,  prefaces  to  Saints  and 
Sinners  and  The  Case  of  Rebellious  Susan,  addressed 
audiences  of  workingmen  and  students  in  England  and 
America,  and  engaged  in  debates  in  print  and  on  the 
platform.  In  1895  he  issued  The  Renascence  of  the 
English  Drama  and  in  1912  Foundations  of  a  National 


HENRY  ARTHUR  JONES  93 

Drama,  discussing  in  these  volumes  such  subjects  as 
drama  and  the  mob,  education  and  the  theatre,  religion, 
the  provinces,  and  censorship. 

The  characteristics  that  Jones  shows  in  his  campaign- 
ing he  shows  also  in  his  plays.  His  plays  may  be  traced 
definitely  to  English  root.  He  refers  often  contemp- 
tuously to  the  "lob-worm  symbolic  school"  of  Norwe- 
gian drama.  Owing  little  to  the  Continent,  outside  of 
the  stimulation  of  examples  and  a  push  toward  a  sex 
interest,  his  plays  are  in  structure  and  character 
thoroughly  English.  Neither  in  thought  nor  in  tech- 
nique does  he  show  more  than  a  glimmer  of  the  ideas 
for  which  Ibsen  was  striving.  In  spite  of  an  appear- 
ance of  revolt,  his  plays  defend  the  status  quo,  they 
go  down  to  no  absolutes  of  judgment,  they  are  pungent 
exposes  of  surfaces  that  involve  no  fundamental  search- 
ing. Jones  has  given  us  a  picture  of  the  English  mind 
of  the  time  as  confused  and  full  of  moral  pockets  as  the 
original,  and  yet  it  is  the  best  picture  of  the  middle- 
class  mind  that  we  have  in  the  theatre. 

As  a  dramatist  Jones  subordinates  everything  to  a 
sociological  interest.  Though  he  is  interested  in 
perfecting  the  instrument  of  his  craft  his  intellectual 
prepossession  seems  to  lie  outside  the  art  in  the  sub- 
stance of  society.  For  this  reason  his  work  has  a  cer- 
tain tangential  twist.  He  seems  to  be  aiming  at  some 
point  outside  of  the  structure  of  the  play  itself.  Most 
of  his  plays  have  a  large  and  carefully  worked  out 
social  background  in  which  the  action  itself  is 
dwarfed.  When  he  builds  a  play  around  a  character, 
that  character  is  an  embodied  point  of  view,  a  crux 


94  THE  CONTEMPORARY  DRAMA  OF  ENGLAND 

in  the  social  fabric.  Jones's  code  of  play  construc- 
tion is  evolved  from  his  own  necessities  rather  than 
from  a  study  of  the  well-made  play  or  the  codes  of 
naturalism.  For  this  reason  his  plays  refuse  to  cata- 
logue under  schools  or  influences.  He  maintains 
throughout  his  career  many  of  the  characteristics  of 
melodrama  with  which  he  began.  His  plays  are 
spread  over  long  spaces  of  time.  The  action  seldom 
proceeds  in  sequence  of  events  from  beginning  to  end. 
A  mark  of  Jones's  diagrammatic  mind  is  found  in 
his  handling  of  characters.  In  trying  to  make  his 
characters  representative  he  has  fallen  into  formulas. 
His  favorite  man  seems  to  be  a  priestly  ascetic,  an 
artist,  scientist,  explorer,  or  minister  who  revolts 
against  the  frivolity  of  the  age  and  yet  is  led  with  total 
lack  of  wisdom  into  the  arms  of  folly.  Another  char- 
acter is  the  middle-class  tradesman,  sufiiciently  pros- 
perous, who  has  elected  himself  guardian  of  the  morality 
of  the  community.  Jones  usually  presents  his  trades- 
men in  groups  and  too  often  under  their  respectable 
robes  they  are  badly  spotted  with  sin.  Above  all  Jones 
has  prided  himself  on  his  women.  He  has  given  us 
all  kinds  of  women  except  the  "eternal  womanly." 
Customary  figures  are  a  temperamental  woman,  a  girl 
self-willed,  a  siren,  an  adventuress,  a  pagan,  a  woman 
misled  by  revenge,  or  ennui,  or  tipsy  with  frivolity. 
Frail  as  these  women  may  be,  Jones's  strong  man 
always  succumbs  to  them.  Last  among  his  types  is 
that  of  the  aged  baronet  who  has  gone  the  ''fin  de 
si^le"  pace  and  has  come  forth  safe  on  the  other  side 
and    is    calm    and    understanding    and    helpful    to 


HENRY  ARTHUR  JONES  95 

mesdames  and  men.  Adept  at  putting  hand  on 
shoulder,  with  plenty  of  time  from  great  duties  to 
patch  up  domestic  rows,  talkative  fellows,  these 
noblemen  have  a  certain  urbane  charm. 

In  one  particular  sense  Jones  makes  his  structure 
typical  of  the  time.  The  world  he  presents  is  a  show 
world.  Its  doctrine  is  appearances.  Its  punishments 
are  meted  out  to  those  who  violate  the  code  of  front. 
It  is  not  hypocrisy  that  he  attacks  but  the  assumption 
that  anything  else  is  the  code.  Hypocrisy  is  the  means 
by  which  the  ideal  is  kept  alive.  He  takes  the  text  of 
The  Triumph  of  the  Philistines  from  Ecclesiastes  "Be 
not  righteous  overmuch;  why  should'st  thou  destroy 
thyself";  and  from  The  Pilgrim's  Scrip  for  another 
play  he  quotes  "  Expediency  is  man's  wisdom ;  doing 
right  is  God's."  Taking  this  pragmatic  doctrine, 
Jones  adapts  a  code  of  playwriting  to  it.  This  code 
rejects  the  absolute  values,  asks  no  support  from  right 
or  the  sense  of  duty,  but  rests  upon  the  law  that  only 
those  who  conform  can  be  happy.  The  movement  of 
most  of  Jones's  plays  is  directed  either  to  the  weaving 
of  a  nice  veil  of  appearances  around  dubious  scenes  or 
to  showing  that  the  bad  appearances  were  misleading. 
The  cardinal  sins  of  society  are  in  Jones's  plays  car- 
dinal sins  still.  Courageous  as  he  is  in  attacking  the 
Philistine,  he  throws  him  no  deep  challenge  of  doctrine. 
Jones's  doctrine  of  appearances  is  shown  in  the  theat- 
rical use  he  makes  of  confessions.  As  his  final  stand- 
ard does  not  lie  within  the  man  but  outside  him, 
the  final  solution  comes  through  adjustment  not  to 
one's  own  sense  of  right  but  to  the  crowd.    It  need 


96   THE  CONTEMPORAKY  DRAMA  OF  ENGLAND 

not  be  said  that  the  confession  scenes  of  Saints  and 
Sinners  and  Michael  and  his  Lost  Angel  have  a  strong 
theatrical  value.  But  they  have  another  value.  A 
public  confession  is  an  admission  of  the  right  of 
the  crowd  to  an  interest  in  the  affair.  Jones's 
confession  scenes  are  surrenders  to  philistinism.  In 
this  way  his  social  predilections  extend  even  to  his 
technique. 

As  the  characteristics  of  melodrama  qualify  all  of 
Jones's  work,  it  may  be  worth  our  while  to  ask  what 
are  the  qualities  of  melodrama.  These  are:  First, 
it  is  governed  by  force  rather  than  by  sentiment  or 
emotion.  Second,  the  story  is  developed  by  action, 
circumstance,  and  "machinery"  rather  than  by  the 
tracing  of  motives  or  personal  revelation.  Third,  the 
characters  are  types,  each  one  revealing  the  average 
characteristics  of  the  group  he  represents.  Fourth, 
within  the  types  they  are  arranged  by  the  most  rudi- 
mentary of  moral  divergences.  The  struggle  is  always 
between  the  good  and  the  bad,  and  all  characters  ally 
themselves  with  one  or  the  other  party.  Fifth,  the 
action  of  melodrama  takes  place  upon  a  plastic  stage. 
It  involves  many  and  rapid  changes  of  scene  and  action, 
in  following  which  it  calls  upon  the  assistance  of  the 
imagination.  AU  these  characteristics  are  found  in 
Jones's  work. 

The  Silver  King,  the  most  successful  melodrama  of 
modern  times,  was  written  by  Jones  in  collaboration 
with  Henry  Herman,  and  produced  by  Wilson  Barrett 
at  the  Princess's  Theatre,  November  16, 1882.  Not  in 
itself  a  work  of  great  originality  it  displayed  remi- 


HENRY  ARTHUR  JONES  97 

niscences  of  Fitzball's  melodrama,  Jonathan  Bradford; 
of  Monte  Cristo,  in  the  enrichment  of  the  protagonist 
through  a  mine ;  of  Les  Miserahles,  in  the  element  of 
character  reform;  and  of  German  sentimental  plays, 
in  the  loving  parent  hovering  about  the  children  he 
dare  not  acknowledge.  It  has  all  the  favorite  proper- 
ties of  melodrama  in  its  racing  stable,  sailors'  retreat, 
faithful  servants,  jealous  and  unprincipled  loves,  evic- 
tion for  non-payment  of  rent,  false  accusations  of 
murder,  and  criminals  who  turn  informer.  But  with 
all  that  was  old  there  was  much  that  was  new.  There 
was  in  the  play  a  warmth  and  vitality  of  imagination 
not  before  found,  a  personal  pressure  amounting  to  an 
intense  moral  outlook.  The  most  important  new  note 
in  this  play  was  the  note  of  conscious  self-regeneration. 
Denver's  impassioned  cry,  "Oh,  God,  put  back  thy 
Universe  and  give  me  yesterday",  is  rhetoric  indeed, 
but  it  is  rhetoric  born  out  of  the  passion  of  life.  In 
this  note  the  play  differs  from  its  predecessors.  It  is 
not  a  case  here  as  in  Jonathan  Bradford,  Lights  o' 
London,  or  Taken  from  Life,  of  an  innocent  man  accused 
of  a  crime  he  had  not  committed.  Denver  is  under  the 
impression  that  he  had  committed  the  crime,  and  his 
subsequent  repentance  and  self-redemption  take  their 
real  meaning  from  this  opinion. 

Jones  tells  us  that  the  success  of  The  Silver  King 
freed  him  to  write  as  he  pleased.  In  his  next  play. 
Saints  and  Sinners,  produced  at  the  Vaudeville  Theatre, 
September  25,  1884,  he  assumes  the  role  of  the  social 
critic.  In  that  it  threw  the  theatre  into  the  arena  of 
public  discussion  this  play  occupies  a  historic  position. 


98   THE  CONTEMPOEARY  DRAMA  OF  ENGLAND 

In  form  the  play  still  has  characteristics  of  melodrama. 
It  is  a  seduction  play  with  characters  balanced  between 
the  "good"  and  the  "bad"  people.  It  moves  through 
nine  scenes.  Its  spirit  is  rhetorical  and  expansive. 
But  it  goes  beyond  melodrama  in  many  respects.  The 
value  of  action  is  reduced  in  behalf  of  the  value  of 
moral  intention.  The  characters  are  no  longer  stalking 
figures.  Jacob  Fletcher,  the  minister,  has  the  literary 
qualities  of  the  Vicar  of  Wakefield  plus  a  modern 
fighting  idealism.  Hoggard  and  Prabble  are  Jones's 
symbols  of  the  middle  class.  Most  significant  of  all 
as  a  moral  figure  is  Fanshawe.  By  all  models  Jones 
had  simply  to  show  Fanshawe  ending  as  he  had  begun 
in  selfish  cynicism.  The  author  gains  nothing  for  the 
play  by  making  his  seducer  repent.  But  Jones  makes 
Fanshawe  human  and  endows  him  with  morality. 
In  so  doing  he  raises  the  moral  value  of  the  play. 
Jones  consistently  disclaims  any  influence  from  Ibsen. 
But  it  is  difficult  to  see  how  his  attack  upon  the  respect- 
able institutions  of  society  can  be  dissociated  from 
the  hifluence  of  Ibsen's  Pillars  of  Society.  The  play 
surrenders  to  another  foreign  influence  in  that  there 
is  added  to  the  melodramatic  movement  of  the  play  a 
denouement  taken  from  France.  At  the  end  of  the 
play  Letty  dies  after  the  fashion  of  the  sinning  heroines 
of  French  drama. 

After  Hoodman  Blind  (1885)  and  The  Noble  Vaga- 
bond (1886),  both  rural  melodramas  with  nothing  to 
commend  them  but  crowded  action  and  strong  spirits, 
Jones  wrote  The  Middleman  (1889)  and  Wealth  (1889). 
These  plays  represent  Jones's  attempt  to  treat  the 


HENRY  ARTHUR  JONES  99 

modern  world  of  industry,  its  capitalists  and  its  laborers, 
by  the  methods  of  melodrama.  The  attempt  was  a 
worthy  one  and  in  the  case  of  the  first  play  achieved 
considerable  success.  Wealth  was  regarded  by  the 
Times  as  grappling  more  uncompromisingly  than  any 
contemporary  play  "with  a  social  problem  of  vital 
interest."  In  Matthew  Ruddock,  the  iron-founder, 
Jones  created  a  prototype  of  Galsworthy's  John  An- 
thony in  Strife.  But  the  author  had  not  learned  to 
handle  with  restraint  a  serious  situation.  The  play 
collapses  in  the  third  act  in  melodrama  and  madness. 

Jones  was  attempting  to  discard  the  code  of  melo- 
drama. His  plays  continued  to  be  forthright  and 
vigorous,  but  the  author  was  learning  to  handle  other 
formulas.  He  now  undertook  to  criticize  society 
through  a  key-character  whose  effectiveness  in  his 
environment  suggests  the  governing  motives  and 
weaknesses  of  men.  The  character  is  often  a  woman 
who  wreaks  havoc  through  her  handling  of  the  weapons 
of  sex,  or  he  is  a  charlatan  who  prospers  on  society's 
willingness  to  be  deceived.  At  first  Jones  tried  to 
treat  these  themes  in  a  serious  way.  This  effort  led 
him  into  many  of  his  violations  of  taste.  As  he  pro- 
ceeded he  learned  that  the  motive  of  the  temptress 
and  the  impostor  require  comic  treatment.  Then  began 
his  better  studies  of  eccentric  character  and  his  comedy 
of  social  groups. 

In  Jvdah  (1890)  we  have  the  first  play  in  which 
Jones's  rather  simple  moral  judgments  are  brought 
into  contact  with  perplexity.  This  play  contains  a 
full  coterie  of  characteristic  Jones  traits.    It  has  the 


100  THE  CONTEMPORARY  DRAMA  OF  ENGLAND 

priestly  hero  in  Judah  Llewellyn,  the  impostor  in 
Dethic;  and  the  tantalizing  pagan  in  Vashti  Dethic. 
The  theme  is  treated  with  extreme  seriousness. 

The  Dancing  Girl,  produced  January  15,  1891,  at  the 
Haymarket  Theatre  by  Mr.  Beerbohm  Tree,  displays 
again  the  characteristics  of  melodrama  turned  to  moral 
uses.  The  sinning  nobleman,  the  courageous  superin- 
tendent, the  heartbroken  father,  the  "big  scene",  are 
paraphernalia  of  melodrama.  The  strong  plea  for 
social  justice,  the  motive  of  character  regeneration, 
the  expiating  death  at  the  end  belong  to  another  order 
of  play.  And  to  another  order  still  belongs  the  char- 
acter of  the  "pagan"  Drusilla,  one  of  the  first  embodi- 
ments of  the  "right  to  life"  motive  in  English  drama. 
Drusilla  is  a  carefully  drawn  type  of  the  woman 
tempter.  But  we  cannot  escape  the  idea  that  she  is 
something  more.  She  is  an  embodiment  of  the  testing 
and  disintegrating  forces  of  the  present  day.  Love 
has  now  become  more  than  a  romantic  episode.  It  has 
become  a  test  of  the  fiber  of  the  individual.  Herein 
lies  one  explanation  of  the  frequent  treatment  of  sex 
in  recent  plays.  It  is  not  only  that  sex  takes  a  large 
place  in  life,  but  that  in  sex  attraction  and  repulsion 
there  can  be  epitomized  the  attractions  and  repulsions 
of  social  intercourse.  Drusilla  represents  the  downfall 
of  the  Duke  of  Guisebury,  and  through  him  the  suffer- 
ing of  the  whole  island  dependent  upon  him  and  the 
jeopardizing  of  explorers  in  the  Arctic  circle.  As 
Guisebury  clears  her  out  of  his  life  his  character  be- 
comes stronger.  Finally  the  neglected  breakwaters  of 
his  life  are  all  rebuilt. 


HENRY  ARTHUR  JONES  101 

With  The  Tempter  (1893),  a  verse  play  in  which  he 
follows  Wills  and  Gilbert  in  trying  to  adapt  the  Me- 
phisto  motive  to  the  nineteenth  century,  Jones's  period 
of  melodrama  comes  to  an  end.  Before  he  finally 
achieved  a  competent  handling  of  comedy  he  created 
another  type  of  play  to  which  one  may  apply  the  title 
the  "house  in  order"  play.  The  idea  of  tables  turned 
is  one  of  the  commonest  in  drama.  Jones  applies 
this  turn  of  plot  to  social  and  moral  issues,  endowing 
it  with  a  significance  in  character  probing  that  had 
not  before  been  seen.  This  interest  is  found  in  Saints 
and  Sinners.  It  is  found  again  in  Michael  and  His 
Lost  Angel  and  The  Hypocrites.  Pinero  uses  it  in 
His  House  in  Order  and  with  greater  technical  variety 
in  The  Gay  Lord  Quex. 

On  Michael  and  His  Lost  Angel  few  critics  agree. 
Some  place  it  at  the  head  of  Jones's  work.  Others 
consider  it  one  of  the  poorest  of  his  plays.  In  struc- 
ture it  is  solid  and  workmanlike,  but  its  theme  is 
forced  and  its  temper  bitter.  The  characters  are 
Jones's  conventional  figures  of  the  ascetic  and  the 
temptress.  Neither  Michael  nor  Audrie  is  a  real 
character.  They  are  driven  into  the  action  by  the 
author's  force.  The  dialogue  is  lyrical  with  a  note 
of  awe  and  pity.  The  author  has  done  all  possible  to 
endow  the  play  with  tragedy  except  to  give  it  truth 
and  significance.  As  it  is,  all  we  can  see  in  it  is  the 
sordid  downfall  of  weaklings.  Even  in  structure  the 
play  is  highly  mechanical.  The  situation  turns  back 
upon  itself  in  the  most  arbitrary  way.  The  outcome 
of  the  play  is  reached  only  by  many  coincidences,  and 


102   THE  CONTEMPORARY  DRAMA  OF  ENGLAND' 

not  even  the  author's  word  will  make  us  believe  in 
the  death  of  Audrie. 

Jones's  most  significant  forward  step  was  taken  when 
he  undertook  the  comedy  of  social  groups.  It  must 
have  become  evident  to  him  that  for  severe  social 
censure  neither  romance  nor  melodrama  was  appro- 
priate. At  the  end  of  the  century  there  had  developed 
a  spirit  of  recklessness,  of  moral  release,  of  cynical 
materialism  not  unlike  that  of  two  centuries  before. 
For  the  treatment  of  this  mood  the  high  and  cold  con- 
ventions of  comedy  of  manners  were  necessary.  Jones 
proceeds  to  undertake  for  his  time  the  task  of  Con- 
greve.  His  comedies  compare  with  Congreve's  as  the 
forthright  vulgarity  of  the  nineteenth  century  compares 
with  the  graceful  naughtiness  of  the  seventeenth. 

Jones  began  his  comedy  career  in  The  Crusaders 
(1891),  a  bluff  satire  on  the  reform  movements  in  the 
England  of  the  end  of  the  century.  Again  we  have  a 
priestly  "Shelley  from  Peckham  Rye",  wise  enough 
to  evolve  a  scheme  to  reform  London,  but  not  wise 
enough  to  protect  himself  in  a  silly  intrigue ;  we  have 
the  crudely  conceived  caricatures,  Palsam,  and  Figg 
and  Jawle;  we  have  Lord  Burnham,  a  statesman  of 
infinite  patience.  Behind  an  inconsequential  story  we 
gain  a  good  sense  of  the  quarrels,  the  compromises, 
the  ineffectiveness  of  organized  reform.  The  Triumph 
of  the  Philistines  (1895)  was  a  criticism  of  the  attitude 
of  the  English  people  toward  art.  There  is  no  doubt 
that  the  author  had  in  mind  another  art  than  sculpture, 
over  which  Mr.  Jorgan  was  at  the  time  exercising  a  good 
deal  of  control.    Over  against  the  caricatures  of  Jorgan 


HENRY  ARTHUR  JONES  103 

and  Skewett,  Wapes,  Blagg,  and  their  fellows,  and  Miss 
Soar,  he  places  one  of  his  unique  creations,  Sally  Le- 
brune,  presumably  a  French  girl,  but  in  reality  a  figure 
representing  his  idea  of  the  free  joyousness  of  life. 
Sally  is  almost  impossibly  a  puppet.  The  author  uses 
her  to  effect  his  favorite  trick  of  "turning  the  tables" 
on  Mr.  Jorgan.  Sir  Valentine  is  the  most  healthy 
example  of  Jones's  "transcendental"  style  of  hero. 
He  is  the  one  hero  of  this  type  who  is  enriched  by  his 
experiences. 

The  Rogiie's  Comedy  (1896)  belongs  to  the  class  of 
impostor  plays  of  which  Judah  is  the  first  example.  It 
is  the  rather  patent  story  of  Bailey  Prothero,  a  society 
fortune  teller,  and  reveals  some  of  the  sterner  stuff  that 
underlies  the  tinsel  of  the  fakir.  Actually  this  is  a 
piece  of  foolery  on  the  credulity  of  men  and  their  wild 
passion  for  speculation,  and  the  organization  of  com- 
panies of  whatever  kind.  This  is  one  of  the  most  sus- 
tained of  Jones's  comedies. 

The  Masqueraders  (1894)  is,  among  all  Jones's  come- 
dies, the  one  which  most  challenges  comparison  with 
the  great  comedies  of  the  language.  One  feels  in  the 
atmosphere  of  this  play  something  of  the  hard  note  of 
Congreve's  The  Way  of  the  World.  In  it  the  author's 
imagination  is  almost  free  from  the  limitations  of  his 
fixed  ideas.  He  seems  to  be  here  more  of  the  observer, 
more  of  the  dramatist  than  elsewhere.  We  have  again 
the  familiar  types.  Dulcie  Larondie  is  a  pagan  plus 
moral  sensibilities.  David  Remon  is  of  the  large 
family  of  Michael  and  Judah.  Though  an  astronomer 
and  experienced  man  of  the  world,  he  can  philosophi- 


104  THE  CONTEMPORARY  DRAMA  OF  ENGLAND 

cally  discount  the  value  of  all  things,  make  himself  the 
slave  of  a  barmaid,  and  win  her  faithful  love  in  return. 
The  play  is  supported  by  some  scenes  of  very  great 
stress.  This  critic  does  not  agree  with  those  who  rail 
at  Montagu  auctioning  off  the  kisses  of  a  barmaid  or 
at  that  stronger  scene  of  the  game  of  cuts  by  which 
Dulcie  Larondie  is  finally  won  to  David.  In  this 
comedy  at  least  Jones's  liberal  plan  of  construction, 
covering  years  of  time  and  a  continent  in  space,  is 
justified.  The  play  is  a  revelation  both  of  a  society  and 
a  man,  a  society  whose  standards  have  collapsed  under 
frivolous  ideas,  a  man  who  has  built  up  a  wall  of  chaffing 
around  his  own  quiet.  All  the  characters  are  true; 
they  are  like  detail  shadows  playing  at  money-making, 
love,  and  politics.  The  engagement  between  Monty 
and  Lady  Clarice  is  a  masterpiece  of  observation  of  two 
unloving  but  keen  people.  Aside  from  the  end  of  the 
play,  which  does  not  sustain  its  promise,  this  is  one  of 
the  best  modern  English  comedies. 

The  Case  of  Rehellums  SiLsan  (1894)  treats  in  a  comic 
spbit  situations  which  would  appear  more  dangerous 
if  found  in  a  French  play.  As  here  practiced  Jones's 
doctrine  of  appearances  operates  against  absolute 
honesty  in  the  play.  He  enunciates  the  theory,  "As 
woman  cannot  retaliate  openly,  let  her  retaliate  secretly 
—  and  lie."  But  the  force  that  denies  her  the  right  to 
retaliate  openly  in  life  denies  it  in  a  play,  so  Jones  never 
tells  us  how  far  Susan  has  gone.  We  know  only  that 
the  hero  is  another  of  his  gallery  of  "strong,  silent" 
men,  that  among  the  characters  appear  Pylus  and 
Elain  Shrimpton,  both  caricatures,  and  that  the  com- 


HENRY  ARTHUR  JONES  105 

plaisant  and  helpful  baronet  appears  again  in  Sir 
Richard. 

The  vigorous  note  of  The  Masqueraders  is  found 
again  in  The  Liars  (1897).  Less  effective  than  The 
MasqiLcraders  in  that  the  play  starts  with  a  social 
group,  interest  is  gradually  centered  in  a  very  common- 
place intrigue.  Falkner,  the  puritan  Don  Quixote, 
does  not  bear  comparison  with  Remon.  He  is  one  of 
Jones's  best  prigs.  But  if  Falkner  does  not  win  friends, 
the  same  cannot  be  said  for  Jessica.  She  is  a  perfectly 
observed  specimen  of  the  selfish  woman  who  plays  with 
her  life  and  honor.  Without  power  either  of  love  or 
of  sacrifice,  she  has  the  gift  only  of  appearances  and 
of  untruth.  Other  excellent  characters  are  those  of 
the  Nepean  brothers.  Strong,  simple,  tenacious,  not 
clever,  these  brothers  stand  four-square  to  reality.  The 
author's  interest  here  lies  behind  the  intrigue  itself  in 
the  successive  rings  of  society  that  are  drawn  into  it 
by  one  lie.  Before  the  end  of  the  play  is  reached,  a 
whole  neighborhood  has  been  honeycombed  with  false- 
hood. 

The  Manoeuvres  of  Jane  (1898)  is  a  study  of  the 
character  of  a  young  woman.  Here  is  a  play  that 
goes  to  the  heart  of  many  relationships  between  chil- 
dren and  their  parents,  and  young  women  and  their 
lovers.  There  is  in  the  young  a  compelling  force  that 
works  their  ends.  As  you  deal  with  them,  see  that  you 
placate  that  force.  For  it  will  make  its  own  plans. 
This  play  is  half  farce,  half  intrigue  play.  Again,  as 
in  Michael  and  his  Lost  Angel,  a  compromising  situation 
is  secured  through  a  boat  excursion. 


106   THE  CONTEMPORARY  DRAMA  OF  ENGLAND 

Mrs.  Barters  Defence  (1900)  is  Jones's  best  serious 
play  because  the  most  specific.  In  this  play  there  is 
no  burden  of  floating  ideas.  It  is  a  close  and  orderly 
study  of  a  concrete  situation  among  men  and  women. 
The  action  is  more  economical  than  is  usual  in  the 
Jones  play,  covering  only  three  weeks.  The  play  is 
the  first  utilization  in  the  theatre  of  the  tense  atmos- 
phere of  a  courtroom  at  a  time  of  cross-examination. 
There  is  no  real  struggle  between  characters.  The 
struggle  is  one  of  wits,  and  interest  is  equally  divided 
between  speculation  as  to  the  outcome  and  interest  in 
operations  of  contending  minds.  The  story  of  the  play 
had  been  told  before  in  Wilkie  Collins's  The  New 
Magdalen.  It  is  that  of  a  sinning  woman  who  attempts 
in  a  new  community  to  live  down  her  errors.  The  play 
has  several  good  characters.  The  helpful  baronet 
here  finds  his  best  use  in  Sir  Daniel,  the  kindly  cross- 
examiner  who  uncovers  the  truth. 

Mrs.  Dane's  Defence  was  produced  in  1900.  Since 
that  date  Jones  has  written  Whitewashing  Julia  (1903) ; 
Joseph  Entangled  (1904);  The  Hypocrites  (1906); 
Dolly  Reforming  Herself  (1908)  ;  The  Divine  Gift  (1913), 
and  half  a  dozen  other  plays.  Among  these,  Dolly 
Reforming  Herself  has  the  best  comedy  spirit.  The 
Divine  Gift  is  smoothly  written  but  is  dull.  The  truth 
is,  Jones  has  not  added  to  his  reputation  during  the  new 
century.  Plenty  of  technical  objections  could  always 
be  raised  to  his  work.  The  number  of  overseen  em- 
braces in  Jones's  plays  speaks  ill  for  the  discretion  if 
not  the  manners  of  his  characters.  He  has  often 
obtruded  his  extra-artistic  purpose.    Sometimes  he  has 


HENRY  ARTHUR  JONES  107 

lost  his  temper.  But  the  fact  remains  that  he  has 
always  been  a  way-breaker,  a  vigorous  fighter  for  good 
things  when  these  were  hard  to  fight  for.  As  a  come- 
dian he  has  the  strongest  hand  since  the  Restoration 
comedians  and  by  no  means  the  least  subtle.  As  a 
valiant  fighter  for  standards,  he  has  been  a  specific  for 
the  stage. 


CHAPTER  VII 
Arthur  Wing  Pinero 

In  the  theatrical  history  of  the  last  thirty  years  the 
names  of  Jones  and  Pinero  have  always  been  associated. 
This  has  arisen  from  no  similarity  in  their  work;  it 
has  come  from  the  complementary  character  of  their 
genius.  Where  Jones  is  the  outside  worker  in  the 
theatre,  Pinero  is  the  inside  worker.  As  time  passes 
Jones's  position  may  come  to  depend  largely  on  the 
work  he  has  done  in  the  reform  of  the  theatre  as  a  social 
institution.  The  position  of  Pinero  must  always  de- 
pend alone  upon  his  work  as  a  playwright. 

The  era  to  which  both  these  men  belonged  closed 
with  the  end  of  the  century.  Both  represented  in  their 
work  the  first  application  of  the  new  standards  to  the 
theatre.  By  necessity  the  work  of  each  was  a  pioneer- 
ing work.  For  this  reason  both  soon  found  themselves 
pressed  upon  by  crowds  of  followers.  Though  both 
of  them  continued  to  write  plays  after  1900,  their  most 
significant  work  was  done  in  the  fifteen  years  that  pre- 
cede the  end  of  the  century. 

Several  qualities  distinguish  Pinero  as  the  pioneer  of 
new  technical  methods.    The  first  of  these  is  that  he 

108 


ARTHUR  WING  PINERO  109 

is  distinctly  a  dramatist  of  the  theatre.  He  is  an  ex- 
pert whose  first  concern  is  in  rendering  more  efiicient 
the  tools  of  his  craft.  He  is  continually  experimenting 
on  new  formulas  for  widening  the  scope  of  his  art. 
This  absorption  in  craftsman  matters  gives  him  a  little 
of  the  professional  air.  He  has  some  of  the  heartless- 
ness  of  the  specialist.  He  remembers  always  that  he 
is  writing  for  actors ;  he  is  careful  to  put  his  plays  into 
form  ready  for  their  use.  One  of  his  best  characteristics 
is  his  possession  of  a  technical  conscience.  He  has 
never  willingly  produced  shoddy  or  incomplete  work. 
A  second  characteristic  of  Pinero  is  that  he  creates 
men  and  women  excellently,  but  thoughts  only  in- 
differently. This  explains  his  failure  when  he  starts 
his  play  with  an  idea,  and  his  invariable  success  when 
he  starts  with  a  group  of  people.  He  lacks  what  Fyfe 
calls  "an  ingrained  habit  of  mind"  or  "steadfast 
persistency  of  vision."  And  Pinero's  third  most 
noticeable  trait  is  a  tendency  to  apply  to  the  theatre 
the  standards  of  literature.  As  naturalism  was  re- 
fined, it  tended  to  take  upon  itself  a  literary  standard, 
the  standard  of  the  steady  surface  of  writing  instead  of 
the  broken  surface  of  action.  Pinero  shows  this  not 
only  in  the  style  of  his  dialogue,  which  is  often  too  well 
turned  for  speech.  He  shows  it  in  an  identification 
of  all  of  his  symbols  with  the  symbols  of  the  page  of 
print.  No  first-rate  dramatist  of  the  time  uses  so 
little  the  extra-literary  appeals  of  setting,  action,  and 
unvoiced  mood.  These  things  being  said,  one  needs 
to  add  that  from  the  start  Pinero  has  represented  the 
best  traditions  of  the  stage.     He  came  into  the  theatre 


110   THE  CONTEMPORABY  DRAMA  OF  ENGLAND 

under  the  influence  of  Irving  and  the  Bancrofts.  His 
career  has  been  one  of  successive  adaptations  of  the 
work  of  the  artist  to  the  best  demands  of  the  time. 

Arthur  Wing  Pinero,  the  son  of  a  lawyer  and  grand- 
son of  a  teller  of  the  Exchequer,  was  himself  destined 
for  the  law  but  went  on  the  stage  at  nineteen  with 
Mr.  and  Mrs.  R.  H.  Wyndham  in  Edinburgh.  This 
engagement  was  followed  by  one  at  Liverpool,  and  in 
1876  he  joined  Irving's  Lyceum  Company,  playing 
utility  parts.  After  five  years  with  Irving,  he  joined 
Mr.  and  Mrs.  Bancroft  at  the  Haymarket  Theatre  in 
the  season  of  1881-1882.  He  did  not  distinguish  him- 
self as  an  actor  in  either  company,  but  Mr.  Bancroft 
tells  that  he  gave  a  remarkably  good  performance  of 
Diggory  in  Goldsmith 's  She  Stoops  to  Conquer.  Pinero 
left  the  Bancroft  company  in  1882  to  devote  himself 
to  writing.  After  the  production  of  £  200  a  Year  (1877) 
at  the  Globe,  his  employer  Irving  gave  him  £  50  for  a 
little  curtain  raiser,  Daisy's  Escape  (1879).  Irving 
also  played  his  Bygones  and  Hester's  Mystery.  All  of 
these  were  serious  plays.  Pinero's  first  important 
play  was  The  Money  Spinner,  presented  at  the  St. 
James's  Theatre,  January  8,  1881,  by  Mr.  Hare  and 
the  Kendals,  and  played  in  two  acts  on  account  of  the 
daring  nature  of  the  scene  in  the  gambling  saloon  in 
the  first  act.  His  next  play.  The  Squire,  was  brought 
out  by  the  same  producers  December  29  of  the  same 
year.  Pinero  gained  critical  approval  immediately. 
In  1886  Archer  hailed  him  as  the  most  original  and 
remarkable  of  living  English  playwrights,  with  the 
possible  exception  of  Gilbert. 


ARTHUR  WING   PINERO  111 

Like  many  others  of  his  time,  Pinero's  prentice  work 
was  done  in  adaptation.  There  had  been  some  charge 
that  for  The  Squire  he  was  indebted  to  Thomas  Hardy's 
novel,  Far  From  the  Madding  Crowd.  In  the  face  of 
the  author's  denial  and  his  offering  of  his  notebooks, 
the  charge  fell  to  the  ground,  but  thereafter  Pinero 
was  very  careful  that  no  such  question  should  arise. 
Lords  and  Commons,  produced  at  the  Haymarket 
Theatre,  October  24,  1883,  by  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Bancroft, 
was  an  adaptation  of  the  Swedish  story  Mannen  af 
Bdrd  och  Qvinnan  af  Folket  by  Marie  Sophie  Schwartz. 
The  story  is  that  of  a  nobleman  who  repudiates  a  bride 
whom  he  discovers  to  be  illegitimate.  It  utilizes  the 
familiar  device  found  in  Kotzebue's  The  Stranger  and 
thereafter  in  many  other  plays  and  tales  of  a  person 
moving  unknown  in  a  circle  to  which  he  had  formerly 
belonged.  Other  adaptations  are  The  Ironmaster 
(1884)  from  George  Ohnet's  Le  Maitre  de  Forges, 
already  known  in  an  unauthorized  adaptation  by  Bu- 
chanan; and  Mayfair  (1885)  from  Sardou's  Maison 
Neuve,  a  play  of  striking  situations  but  quite  unlike  Pi- 
nero's usual  style.  Two  other  plays  of  the  apprentice 
period  are  The  Rector  (1883)  and  Law  Water  (18»4). 
In  the  first  play  the  author  undertakes  to  use  the  device 
of  surprise.  The  audience  is  led  through  an  action 
assailing  the  honor  of  a  good  woman,  the  wife  of  a 
rector,  only  to  find  at  the  end  that  the  accusation  is 
that  of  a  madman.  Low  Water,  though  not  a  success, 
shows  the  author's  demand  for  better  things.  There 
were  no  technical  tricks.  A  betrayed  woman  fights 
her  situation  through  with  patience  and  in  the  end 


112   THE  CONTEMPORARY  DRAMA  OF  ENGLAND 

marries  the  man  who  had  deserted  her.  On  account 
of  its  theme,  the  play  was  called  immoral.  It  was  in 
fact  moral  beyond  the  code  of  the  day.  Pinero  dis- 
avowed the  play  after  its  production,  claiming  that  it 
had  been  produced  against  his  protest  and  under  con- 
ditions to  obscure  its  meaning.  To  the  year  1884 
belongs  the  play  The  Weaker  Sex,  which  was  not  pro- 
duced until  1888.  The  play  deals  with  an  artificial 
theme,  that  of  a  mother  and  daughter  in  love  with  the 
same  man.  It  is  treated  with  dexterity  and  sympathy. 
For  this  play  as  well  as  for  his  later  The  Profligate, 
Pinero  provided  an  alternative  ending  the  better  to 
comport  with  truth,  and  to  satisfy  the  demands  of  his 
audiences. 

Pinero  finally  discovered  himself  in  farce.  Only  in 
the  seventies  had  farce  developed  from  the  one-act 
vaudeville  of  doors  and  closets  into  a  three-act  play 
based  upon  some  observation  of  character.  The  in- 
fluence of  Labiche  and  the  German  von  Moser  had 
introduced  eccentricity  into  farce  and  even  some  ele- 
ment of  manners  and  humors.  One  of  the  first  three- 
act  farces  was  The  Great  Divorce  Case,  produced  by 
Alexander  Henderson  in  1877  at  the  Criterion.  A 
famous  naughty  English  farce  which  successfully 
affronted  Mrs.  Grundy  was  Pink  Dominoes  (1877). 
As  modern  English  farce  developed,  we  find  it  falling 
into  the  eccentric  farce  of  Edward  Terry  and  the  polite 
farce  of  Charles  Wyndham.  And  not  the  least  im- 
portant stage  in  modern  English  farce  is  that  stage 
which  is  represented  by  Pinero's  Court  Theatre  series 
of  farces  of  the  eighties. 


ARTHUR  WING  PINERO  113 

As  practiced  by  the  best  writers,  farce  is  a  highly 
conventionalized  form.  It  carries  a  definite  set  of 
standards  and  has  a  certain  representative  value  as 
a  formalized  commentary  on  men.  Far  from  being  a 
form  of  haphazard  entertainment,  farce  demands  a 
code  of  consistency  beyond  that  of  the  "well-made" 
play.  Pinero  holds  that  farce  shows  us  probable  people 
doing  possible  things.  This  may  be  explained  by  say- 
ing that  farce  is  the  result  of  the  application  to  the  play 
of  a  convention  of  logic  beyond  the  standards  of  every- 
day human  practice.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  human 
nature  is  not  logical,  and  personality  varies  according 
to  our  greater  or  lesser  modification  of  the  codes  of 
logic  in  human  affairs.  As  a  rule  the  theatre  deals 
only  with  those  actions  which  lie  outside  of  logic,  or  as 
we  say,  the  "human"  actions.  But  farce  deals  with 
the  incongruity  between  logic  and  life.  Farce  holds 
people  to  the  pursuit  of  the  conclusions  involved  in 
their  premises.  The  improbable  things  people  do  in 
farce  are  those  logical  things  which  in  real  life  they 
would  escape  by  throwing  logic  overboard.  Being 
caught  in  a  net  of  circumstances  the  real  person  would 
withdraw  or  explain.  Not  so  the  consistent  character 
in  farce.  He  pushes  forward  on  his  path  until  he  has 
reached  the  human  reduction  to  the  absurd. 

Through  his  handling  of  farce,  Pinero  gained  his 
command  of  the  stage.  In  this  he  first  began  to  handle 
real  human  nature.  In  The  Rocket  (1883),  written  for 
Edward  Terry,  we  have  the  story  of  Chevalier  Walkin- 
shaw,  whose  fortunes  go  up  like  a  rocket  when  a  young 
girl  he  passes  off  as  his  daughter  becomes  engaged  to  a 


114   THE  CONTEMPORAKY  DRAMA  OF  ENGLAND 

wealthy  suitor,  and  come  down  like  a  stick  when  she 
is  shown  to  be  the  daughter  of  a  comedy  personage. 
In  Independence  and  In  Chancery  (1884)  we  have  two 
further  farces  of  situation.  The  Court  Theatre  series 
of  farces  begins  with  The  Magistrate  and  extends  up 
to  the  time  that -the  increased  expertness  of  the  author's 
observation  influenced  him  to  merge  the  art  of  farce 
into  that  of  comedy,  to  exchange  hard  logic  for  the 
playful  spirit  of  fantasy.  The  Magistrate  (1885)  is 
based  upon  the  device  of  a  woman's  understatement  of 
her  age.  This  device  is  quite  acceptable.  And  it  is 
true  enough  that  circumstances  in  the  figure  of  a  grow- 
ing son  will  come  unceasingly  to  contest  her  statement. 
The  Schoolmistress  (1886)  and  Dandy  Dick  (1887)  are 
based  upon  traits  of  character  which  are  in  themselves 
true  and  human,  but  as  treated  are  carried  to  im- 
probable extremes. 

After  Dandy  Dick,  Pinero  introduces  other  elements 
into  his  farces  which  almost  carry  them  over  to  other 
forms  of  drama.  During  this  period  he  was  writing 
Sweet  Lavender  and  The  Profligate,  and  the  sentimental 
strains  of  the  one  and  the  moral  passions  of  the  other 
enter  into  his  lighter  forms.  In  The  Hobby  Horse  (1886) 
he  writes  a  play  on  the  vagaries  of  false  philanthropy 
that  has  some  of  the  flavor  of  H.  A.  Jones's  later  The 
Crusaders.  The  horsey  characters,  though  belonging 
to  an  old  and  popular  type,  are  not  unlike  Jones's 
middle-class  figures.  Pinero  had  stepped  out  of  farce 
into  sentimental  comedy.  Likewise,  though  The  Cab- 
inet Minister  (1890)  was  called  a  farce,  it  varied  from 
the  earlier  farces  in  that  it  was  a  whimsical  treatment 


ARTHXJR  WING   PINERO  115 

of  a  serious  subject.  Pinero  was  striking  his  roots 
more  deeply  into  human  nature.  He  was  attempting 
to  add  to  the  cold  logic  of  farce  a  warmer  note  of 
human  commentary  or  emotion.  This  tendency  is 
seen  in  his  treatment  some  years  later  of  the  theme  of 
The  Amazons  (1893),  a  play  based  upon  a  device  that 
offers  farcical  possibilities.  But  with  a  deeper  sym- 
pathy than  he  has  shown  before,  Pinero  loses  interest 
in  the  farce  possibilities  of  his  theme  in  his  tender 
searching  out  of  the  heart  of  a  mother,  and  the  budding 
womanhood  of  three  charming  girls.  Circumstance 
here  stands  not  only  for  the  logic  of  events,  but  for 
the  logic  of  a  sweet  and  full  human  nature  learning  in 
due  time  its  lessons  of  love  and  tenderness  and  discard- 
ing the  well-made  plans  of  the  past. 

Much  water  has  passed  over  the  wheel  since  Polonius 
classified  the  plays  of  his  youth  as  "tragedy,  com- 
edy, history,  pastoral,  pastoral-comical,  historical-pas- 
toral, tragical-historical,  tragical-comical-historical- 
pastoral."  Though  this  classification  was  not  exact, 
after  three  centuries  we  have  not  been  able  to  make  a 
classification  that  pleases  all  comers.  The  critic  who 
attempts  to  classify  plays  falls  into  the  same  confusion 
as  the  critic  who  attempts  to  classify  men  and  for  the 
same  reason. 

Under  such  circumstances  the  simplest  division  is 
the  best.  Such  a  classification  throws  plays  into  the 
two  classes  of  serious  drama  and  comedy.  In  serious 
plays  some  course  of  action  is  presumed  to  have  a 
binding  effect  upon  the  fortunes  of  the  characters,  an 
effect  they  cannot  escape  on  account  of  a  fusing  of 


116   THE  CONTEMPORARY  DRAMA  OF  ENGLAND 

external  circumstance  with  internal  character.  In 
comedy  this  course  of  action  is  shown  to  have  only  a 
temporary  effect.  The  relationship  between  the  inter- 
nal and  the  external  is  flexible  and  subject  to  adjust- 
ment without  pain. 

Now  under  naturalism  comedy  is  likely  to  be  better 
than  the  serious  play.  This  is  because  it  is  demanded 
of  every  work  of  art  that  it  be  true  not  only  to  itself 
but  to  all  relevant  things.  It  is  easier  to  make  comedy 
representative  than  tragedy  because  comedy  is  less 
likely  to  involve  outside  associations.  It  is  diflScult  to 
write  a  true  serious  play  according  to  the  conventions 
of  naturalism  for  the  reason  that  it  is  difficult  to  find  a 
set  of  concrete  facts  that  adjust  themselves  to  abstract 
truth.  While  it  is  perfectly  possible  to  show  a  set  of 
conditions  culminating  in  the  death  of  the  chief  figure 
of  a  serious  play,  the  work  can  have  no  significance 
unless  these  conditions  are  representative.  In  the  case 
of  a  serious  play  we  are  bound  to  ask,  "Is  this  true 
of  things  in  general?  Is  this  death,  this  downfall, 
representative  in  a  large  sense  of  the  course  of  nature  ?" 
If  it  is  not,  the  play  becomes  a  piece  of  special  pleading 
quite  outside  the  domain  of  art.  In  the  case  of  comedy, 
because  it  is  more  detached,  because  its  action  is  tem- 
porary and  subject  to  adjustment,  it  is  not  so  difficult 
to  find  a  plot  that  bears  the  stamp  of  truth.  For 
comedy  we  ask  only  "Are  the  facts  as  given  true? 
Are  they  truthfully  interpreted?"  On  this  account, 
and  because  naturalism  has  not  worked  out  as  yet  a 
code  for  the  harmony  of  the  concrete  facts  of  a  limited 
action  and  the  universal  truth  of  its  conclusion,  comedy 


ARTHUR   WING   PINERO  117 

is  the  better  form  outside  of  the  tragedy  of  the  Greeks 
and  of  Shakespeare, 

These  considerations  strike  one  with  particular  force 
in  considering  Pinero's  work.  He  undertook  comedy 
and  serious  plays  at  about  the  same  time.  He  con- 
tinues to  write  both  throughout  his  career.  And  yet  in 
his  handling  of  comedy  he  is  far  more  a  master  than 
he  is  in  the  handling  of  serious  plays.  To  the  handling 
of  comedy  Pinero  came  with  lessons  learned.  He  had 
developed  an  observing  eye ;  he  had  learned  the  rules 
of  objectivity ;  he  could  built  a  structure  remarkable 
for  balance  and  economy.  When  we  consider  Pinero's 
comedies  we  find  that  he  handled  two  distinct  types 
of  comedy  and  that  he  handled  them  with  equal 
mastery.  We  have  seen  that  Pinero  received  his  early 
tuition  in  the  company  for  which  Robertson  had 
evolved  a  highly  specialized  art  form.  Robertson  was 
the  chief  modern  representative  of  the  school  of  senti- 
mental comedy.  Pinero's  attitude  toward  sentiment 
is  of  peculiar  interest  in  that  his  comedies  fall  into  two 
groups,  in  the  one  of  which  the  action  is  dominated  by 
the  mellow  motives  of  simple  emotion,  and  in  the  other 
this  emotion  is  denied  and  inverted. 

Of  these  two  groups  the  sentimental  came  earlier, 
but  it  finds  isolated  expression  as  late  as  Letty  (1903). 
Sentiment  with  Pinero,  as  with  his  master  Robertson, 
was  never  the  warm  overflow  of  Dickens's  feeling.  It 
was  rather  the  quaint  sympathy  and  insight  of 
Thackeray.  Even  in  his  farces  The  Hobby  Horse  and 
The  Cabinet  Minister,  critics  had  discerned  a  serious  and 
a  lingering  note.    In  other  plays  of  the  same  period 


118   THE  CONTEMPORARY  DRAMA  OF  ENGLAND 

the  element  of  farce  was  either  greatly  reduced  or 
excluded  altogether.  Appropriately  enough,  Pinero's 
first  success  outside  of  farce  was  secured  in  the  pure 
sentimental  genre  for  which  he  was  indebted  to  Robert- 
son. In  Sweet  Lavender  (1888)  there  are  many  traces 
of  Society  and  Caste.  It  would  seem  that  this  play 
was  almost  consciously  an  exercise  in  an  older  form  of 
playwriting.  More  than  any  other  of  Pinero's  plays 
it  was  based  upon  a  sentimental  motive.  And  The 
Times  (1891),  though  beginning  as  farce  and  ending  as 
social  satire,  was  in  fact  a  sentimental  comedy.  The 
play  reveals  an  ironic  note  of  social  commentary  not 
unlike  that  of  the  comedies  of  Jones  softened  with  a 
regard  for  the  sentimental  values  of  the  action.  Tre- 
lavmey  of  the  "Wells"  (1898),  written  long  after 
Pinero  had  taken  a  high  place  as  the  writer  of  serious 
plays,  again  returns  to  Robertson,  to  whom  it  must  be 
considered  a  tribute.  It  too  hangs  upon  a  sentimental 
theme.  The  difference  of  social  ranks  shown  in  Caste 
and  Society  is  seen  here  in  the  contrast  between  the 
care-free  Bohemian  life  of  the  circuit-actors  and  the . 
heavy  atmosphere  of  the  Gower  Street  household.  But 
this  is  something  more  than  mere  sentimental  comedy. 
It  most  demands  respect  in  that  it  is  a  beautiful  speci- 
men of  a  diflScult  form,  the  historical  comedy.  As  a 
rule  comedy  demands  a  contemporaneous  note.  It  is 
difficult  to  realize  the  issues  of  the  action  unless  this  is 
placed  in  the  midst  of  the  present.  But  Pinero  achieves 
with  remarkable  precision  the  atmosphere  of  the  crino- 
line days,  and  without  any  allusions  to  historical  data 
brings  before  us  a  sentimental  theme,  the  circumstances 


ARTHUR  WING  PINERO  119 

of  which  had  been  dead  for  a  generation.  The  play 
is  a  loving  picture  of  the  life  of  actors  in  the  days 
of  the  breaking  up  of  the  circuit.  In  the  character  of 
the  young  dramatist,  Tom  Wrench,  Pinero  gives  clear 
expression  to  the  ideals  that  were  remaking  the  drama 
of  England.  Many  years  later,  in  writing  Letty  (1903), 
Pinero  returned  to  the  mood  of  Robertson  in  providing 
an  atmosphere  in  which  to  place  his  affecting  study  of 
a  woman's  surrender  to  a  forbidden  love. 

But  if  Pinero  owes  allegiance  to  Robertson  as  one 
of  his  masters  of  comedy,  he  is  influenced  as  well  by 
the  drier  and  more  ironic  wit  of  Gilbert.  And  the  latter 
is  the  influence  that  seems  to  have  adapted  itself  more 
nearly  to  his  own  outlook  as  an  artist.  Critics  soon 
discovered  in  Pinero  that  same  mauvais  horde  in  the 
treatment  of  the  sentiments  of  love  that  they  had 
found  in  Gilbert.  The  emotions  of  comradeship,  the 
human  frailties  and  little  virtues,  the  pride  and  long- 
ing and  fears  of  parents  he  could  treat  with  a  ready 
pen.  But  the  glow  of  young  love  he  could  never  take 
seriously.  This  was  no  mere  perversity.  It  was  a 
quality  of  his  delicacy  of  taste  and  his  instinct  for 
truth.  It  arose  from  his  refusal  to  see  life  through 
other  men's  eyes  and  to  see  it  in  only  one  quality.  He 
saw  it  in  a  combination  of  qualities.  His  plays  are 
unusual  for  the  sense  of  depth  he  secures  in  character. 
The  immature  figures  of  the  Victorian  love  story  have 
no  place  in  his  work.  His  characters  are  men  and 
women  of  many  planes  of  motive  and  action. 

Out  of  these  characteristics  there  came  two  of  Pinero's 
most  exquisite  forms  of  comedy.    Fantasy  arises  from 


120  THE  CONTEMPORAEY  DRAMA  OF  ENGLAND 

the  application  to  the  harder  outlines  of  comedy  of  the 
softer  graces  of  poetic  imagination.  Fantasy  is  no 
less  rigorous  than  comedy.  There  is  in  it  nothing  of 
the  haphazard  or  the  inconsequent.  It  subjects  the 
actions  of  men  to  the  playful  treatment  of  fancy.  Its 
purpose  is  the  uncovering  of  the  more  remote  spaces  of 
human  character.  And  the  other  type  of  comedy  is 
what  may  be  called  sophisticated  comedy,  or  what  the 
French  call  comedie  rosse.  This  form  of  comedy  appeals 
particularly  to  an  artificial  society  in  which  the  normal 
emotions  of  men  are  concealed  or  inverted.  The 
sophisticated  comedy  is  one  of  hard  surfaces.  Of 
commie  rosse,  Filon  says  in  his  little  volume  De  Dumas 
h  Rostand:  "Comedie  rosse  is  not  that  style  in  which 
the  heroine  plays  the  villain's  r61e.  The  rosserie 
applies  to  all  the  characters.  It  consists  in  a  lack 
of  conscience,  a  kind  of  vicious  ingenuity,  the  state  of 
mind  of  people  who  have  never  had  a  sense  of  morality, 
who  live  always  in  mixed  issues  or  in  injustice  as  a 
fish  lives  in  water.  ...  A  reign  of  evil  is  established 
without  apparent  change  in  the  familiar  relationships 
of  society,  or  in  everyday  language."  As  far  as  this 
type  of  comedy  applies  to  England,  it  develops  out 
of  a  dulling  of  the  moral  sense  through  selfishness  or 
cupidity  rather  than  through  passion. 

Both  of  these  forms  of  comedy  are  a  result  of  a  high 
development  of  the  comic  spirit.  In  Lady  Bountijul 
(1891)  and  The  Princess  and  the  Butterfly  (1897), 
Pinero  wrote  two  beautiful  plays  of  the  fantastic  order. 
In  each  case  the  theme  is  one  that  might  have  been 
attacked  full-handed  with  satire  or  with  sentiment  — 


ARTHUR  WING   PINERO  121 

in  the  one  case,  humanitarian  activities ;  in  the  other, 
the  illusion  of  growing  old.  The  author's  exquisite 
skill  is  shown  in  what  he  avoids  as  well  as  in  what  he 
embraces.  In  The  Princess  and  the  Butterfly  the  illu- 
sion that  it  is  too  late  for  love  is  not  corrected  by  the 
more  pathetic  illusion  that  youth  lasts  always;  the 
antidote  is  a  genial  recognition  that  there  is  a  love  for 
all  ages,  and  the  later  may  be  no  less  dear  than  the 
earlier. 

But  it  is  in  sophisticated  comedy  that  Pinero  reaches 
the  heights  of  his  achievement.  The  marks  of  Pinero's 
sophisticated  comedy  are  two :  a  delicacy  and  tact 
in  treating  the  heartlessness  of  men;  a  hardness  and 
taciturnity  in  dealing  with  their  tenderer  virtues.  The 
unmoral  young  person  had  been  introduced  by  Gilbert 
as  a  substitute  for  the  sentimental  young  person. 
Sophisticated  comedy  was  the  result  of  the  application 
of  an  unmoral  method  to  the  action  of  the  play.  Its 
attitude  is  that  of  the  watcher,  who  withholds  judg- 
ment on  moral  values.  It  is  particularly  effective  for 
the  telling  of  a  daring  story,  the  action  of  which  takes 
place  in  some  neutral  region  which  would  be  obscured 
by  an  insistence  upon  moral  values.  The  theme  of 
such  a  play  is  judged  altogether  as  a  revelation  of  men, 
and  not  for  the  philosophy  it  enunciates.  In  some 
such  way  The  Gay  Lord  Quex  (1899)  is  to  be  considered. 
It  has  its  commentary  value  no  doubt,  but  the  con- 
sideration of  this  is  likely  to  blind  us  to  the  artistry 
that  made  it  a  hard  and  brilliant  fabric  of  tempered 
wits.  The  play  is  important  not  as  showing  a  certain 
philosophy  of  life,  as  representing  frivolity,  but  as 


122   THE  CONTEMPORARY  DRAMA  OP  ENGLAND 

showing  how  a  set  of  trained  intelligences,  all  developed 
selfishly  and  for  the  ends  of  their  own  pleasure,  would 
act  under  a  given  set  of  circumstances.  That  the 
characters  are  true  there  is  no  doubt.  That  the  story 
represents  the  author's  view  of  life  need  not  be  be- 
lieved. The  story  as  it  is  given  to  us  is  as  much  better 
than  life  in  wit  and  the  technique  of  living  as  it  is 
lower  than  life  in  morals.  We  are  no  more  called  upon 
to  applaud  Quex's  reform  at  the  end  than  to  reprehend 
his  low  standards  at  the  beginning.  The  play  exists 
in  a  zone  of  pure  thought,  and  it  is  as  a  fabric  of  design 
that  the  work  remains  one  of  the  most  notable  in  the 
language. 

Pinero  has  written  several  comedies  since  The  Gay 
Lord  Quex,  but  the  only  one  that  compares  with  it  is 
The  Thunderbolt  (1908).  The  moral  fabric  of  this  play 
is  even  harder  than  that  of  The  Gay  Lord  Quex.  By 
this  play  we  are  introduced  into  a  group  from  which 
all  moral  principles  had  been  expelled  by  avarice.  The 
author  calls  this  an  Episode  in  the  History  of  a  Provincial 
Family.  In  construction  it  is  one  of  the  most  closely 
woven  of  English  comedies.  It  is  written  with  hard 
restraint.  The  author  attempts  to  throw  no  shadow 
beyond  the  little  group  of  selfish  men  and  women  who 
have  met  to  open  the  will  of  their  deceased  relative. 
No  character  is  permitted  to  escape  the  author's  re- 
vealing scrutiny.  Only  one  of  the  characters  is  treated 
with  any  sympathy.  All  the  others  are  assayed  under 
his  test  as  blatant,  brutal,  hypocritical,  avaricious. 
The  theme  is  worthy  of  a  Balzac:  the  power  of  the 
idea  of  money  to  debase  the  souls  of  the  men  and  women 


ARTHUR  WING   PINERO  123 

of  a  family.  It  is  handled  with  Balzac's  passion  for 
reality,  and  with  more  than  his  ingenuity.  The  play 
had  only  a  limited  success  upon  the  stage.  The  work 
is  so  concentrated,  the  characters  are  so  real,  the  climax 
lies  so  much  in  the  realm  of  sardonic  imagination,  as 
to  elevate  the  play  beyond  the  instrumentalities  of 
the  stage. 

Of  Pinero's  other  comedies,  A  Wife  without  a  Smile 
(1904),  Preserving  Mr.  Panmure  (1911),  The  "Mind 
the  Paint"  Girl  (1912),  The  Widow  of  Wasdale  Head 
(1912),  Play-goers  (1913),  it  is  sufficient  to  say  that  in 
one  way  or  another  each  has  provided  the  artist  scope 
for  the  exercise  of  his  lighter  moods  and  for  the  dis- 
play of  his  skill.  In  them  the  author  has  used  a  small 
palette  with  dainty  colors,  there  is  little  story,  but 
much  display  of  rarer  moods  and  of  personality. 

We  have  been  so  careful  to  reveal  Pinero  as  a  master 
technician  that  there  will  be  some  interest  in  inquiring 
how  this  man  came  to  harness  his  art  to  the  construction 
of  the  play  of  ideas.  We  shall  find  that  when  he  comes 
to  the  play  of  ideas,  he  begins  again  his  novitiate,  and 
that  in  the  treatment  of  the  serious  play  he  advanced 
not  by  the  continued  development  of  ideas  but  by  the 
gradual  subordination  of  ideas  to  action. 

Pinero's  first  two  serious  plays  of  his  mature  period, 
The  Profligate  (1889)  and  The  Second  Mrs.  Tanqueray 
(1893),  belong  to  the  class  of  ill-digested  ideas.  The 
first  sign  of  the  irrelevance  of  the  theses  is  seen  in  the 
fact  that  the  ideas,  such  as  they  were,  were  but  added 
to  a  plot  which  had  existed  for  years  without  them. 
Nothing  was  more  common  in  the  nineteenth  century 


124  THE  CONTEMPORARY  DRAMA  OF  ENGLAND 

than  what  one  may  call  the  "sin-coming-back"  type 
of  play.  In  the  older  play  the  sin  usually  came  back 
in  the  form  of  an  accusing  victim  or  a  child.  Even 
the  scheme  that  brought  in  an  old  intrigue  to  complicate 
a  new  love  had  been  used  as  lately  as  Grundy's  In 
Honour  Bound  from  Scribe's  Une  Chaine.  It  is  prob- 
able that  Pinero  was  influenced  to  deal  with  a  social 
topic  through  the  vogue  of  problems  in  the  drama  of 
Germany,  France,  and  Norway.  He  began  his  writing 
of  serious  plays  on  the  doctrine  of  determinism  with 
which  George  Eliot  had  begun  the  composition  of 
novels  thirty  years  before.  He  holds  social  morality 
to  be  subject  to  a  scientific  statement  as  simple  and 
diagrammatic  as  Novalis's  doctrine,  "Character  is 
fate."  The  idea  that  humanity  is  a  homogeneous 
organism,  that  consequences  cannot  be  lost,  but  may  be 
traced  through  the  mass,  is  a  nice  scheme  mechanically. 
It  serves  the  drama  very  well  because  it  makes  it  easy 
to  bolster  up  a  particular  circumstance  by  reference  to 
organic  law.  The  limitations  of  this  code  are  that  it 
too  thoroughly  limits  the  powers  of  the  world  to  the 
known  forces  of  humanity.  It  quite  neglects  any 
action  by  chance,  by  mysterious  intervention,  or  by  a 
spirit  of  events  outside  the  ascertainable  forces  of  men. 
It  tries  to  make  a  tragedy  of  divine  vengeance  without 
any  Divinity.  More  than  this,  in  order  to  point  its 
moral,  it  narrows  the  circle  of  action  and  reaction  to  a 
smaller  compass  in  area  and  time  than  experience 
approves.  Excellently  as  this  system  adapts  itself 
to  the  construction  of  plots,  there  is  no  truth  in  such 
an  episode  beyond  the  limits  of  its  own  story.    Neither 


ARTHUR  WING  PINERO  125 

Ghosts,  Rosmersholm,  The  Profligate,  nor  The  Second 
Mrs.  Tanqueray  is  a  modern  tragedy.  They  are  dis- 
tressing stories  about  unhappy  people  whose  fates 
have  httle  application  to  life  in  general. 

It  is  worthy  of  notice  that  as  Pinero  developed  in  the 
artistry  of  the  serious  play,  he  gave  up  any  desire  to 
throw  a  light  on  great  moral  causes  and  satisfied  him- 
self with  the  study  of  a  particular  action.  The  Prof- 
ligate, The  Second  Mrs.  Tanqueray,  and  The  Notorious 
Mrs.  Ehhsmith  are  the  only  plays  in  which  he  sur- 
renders to  an  extra-artistic  control.  In  The  Benefit 
of  the  Doubt,  in  Iris,  and  in  Mid-Channel  he  becomes 
again  merely  an  observer  and  teller  of  tales. 

The  Profligate  was  produced  at  the  Garrick  Theatre, 
April  24,  1889,  with  a  notable  cast:  John  Hare  as 
Lord  Dangars;  Forbes-Robertson  as  Dunstan  Ren- 
shaw;  Lewis  Waller  as  Hugh  Murray;  Miss  Kate 
Rorke  as  Leslie  Brudenell;  Miss  Olga  Nethersole  as 
Janet  Preece.  The  play  was  immediately  recognized 
as  a  serious  piece  of  dramatic  writing.  The  author 
was  evidently  undertaking  to  establish  in  dramatic 
form  the  moral  law,  "What  a  man  sows  that  shall  he 
also  reap."  He  states  this  law  in  the  story  of  a  young 
man,  Dunstan  Renshaw,  who,  having  lived  a  profli- 
gate's life,  is  surprised  on  the  eve  of  his  wedding  to  a 
woman  he  dearly  loves  by  the  young  woman  he 
had  wronged.  In  the  productions  of  the  play  the 
author  used  two  endings,  the  one  involving  the  death  of 
Renshaw  by  suicide,  the  other  his  forgiveness  by  his 
girl  bride.  The  author  intends  that  the  second  ending 
shall  seem  no  less  tragic  than  the  first.    At  this  time 


126  THE  CONTEMPORARY  DRAMA  OF  ENGLAND 

the  matter  of  the  ending  of  a  play  was  receiving  much 
critical  consideration.  There  had  been  so  much  arti- 
ficiality in  bringing  the  curtain  down  happily  that  by 
many  it  was  presumed  that  anything  that  ended  un- 
happily was  for  this  reason  artistic.  This  conclusion 
by  no  means  follows.  The  truth  is  that  very  few  situa- 
tions in  the  present  dispensation  permit  of  the  tragic 
ending  either  of  death  or  despair.  The  dominant  tone 
of  philosophy  and  science  is  one  of  hope  and  rebuilding. 
Death  comes  only  when  one  pits  his  strength  against 
these  spirits.  Quite  properly  7m  ends  unhappily  be- 
cause Iris  refuses  to  ally  herself  with  the  principles  of 
normal  and  healthy  life.  As  she  refuses  to  swim  against 
the  current,  she  is  drawn  down  with  the  current.  But 
there  was  every  disposition  in  Renshaw  to  swim. 
Before  the  author  can  arrive  at  either  one  of  the  dooms 
assigned,  he  has  to  answer  in  the  aflBrmative  two  ques- 
tions: First,  has  Renshaw  shown  himself  without 
redeeming  quality?  Second,  is  Leslie  shown  to  be  of 
a  totally  unforgiving  nature  ?  The  answer  to  the  first 
is  found  in  the  love  of  the  man  for  the  woman  and 
his  sense  of  sin  before  her.  The  answer  to  the  second 
is  contained  in  the  character  of  the  girl.  Striking 
testimony  as  to  what  Leslie  would  do  is  contained  in 
the  reaction  of  another  pure  young  girl  to  the  same 
situation.  When  EUean  in  the  next  play  is  asked 
whether  she  can  forgive  Captain  Ardale,  she  makes  an 
answer  that  goes  far  to  invalidate  the  thesis  upon  which 
the  play  itself  is  built.  She  will  forgive  him,  because 
in  spite  of  his  fault,  he  has  been  a  brave  man,  but 
even  more  because  she  loves  him.    The  conclusion  is 


ARTHUR  WING  PINERO  127 

forced  upon  us  that  whereas  Pinero  undertook  to  write 
a  tragedy  he  failed  to  do  so. 

FeeUng,  perhaps,  that  he  had  in  The  Profligaie  failed 
to  make  his  situation  universally  significant,  the  author 
makes  careful  efforts  to  do  so  in  The  Second  Mrs. 
Tanqueray.  In  The  Profligate  the  action  of  the  play  is 
set  at  a  point  at  the  end  of  the  episode.  The  author 
had  not  permitted  us  to  validate  his  conclusions  by  a 
study  of  the  characters  over  a  long  period  of  time. 
In  The  Second  Mrs.  Tanqueray  he  explicitely  states  the 
problem  at  the  beginning  and  suffers  us  to  follow  out 
its  realization.  The  theme  is  complementary  to  that 
of  The  Profligate.  It  begins  with  the  problem  of  this 
play  as  it  would  be  at  the  time  of  the  marriage  of 
Leslie  and  Renshaw,  though  in  the  second  play  the 
guilt  is  transferred  from  the  man  to  the  woman.  The 
theme  is  this :  Can  a  marriage  between  a  prostitute 
and  a  good  man  be  made  a  success,  granted  that  the 
husband  knows  the  wife's  past  and  is  determined  to 
help  her  to  redeem  it?  This  question  Pinero  answers 
in  the  negative  for  the  same  reason  he  had  so  an- 
swered in  the  former  play  —  because  the  past  comes 
back.  It  is  clear  that  his  answer  does  not  cover  the 
situation.  The  answer  does  not  lie  in  the  inconvenient 
habit  of  the  past  to  come  back  but  in  the  character  of 
the  woman.  This  may  be  illustrated  in  the  quite  vulgar 
theme  of  Augier's  Mariage  d'Olympe.  Here  the  ques- 
tion is :  Can  a  man  marry  a  courtesan  without  suffer- 
ing for  it  ?  And  the  answer  is,  he  cannot  if  she  remain 
a  courtesan.  And  this  Olympe  does  quite  simply. 
She  is  the  same  scheming  ambitious  prostitute  after 


128   THE  CONTEMPORARY  DRAMA  OF  ENGLAND 

her  marriage  that  she  had  been  before,  and  her  end 
comes  expeditiously  as  the  result  of  a  train  of  cir- 
cumstances that  have  no  general  meaning  beyond  im- 
pressing the  maxim,  "Don't  marry  a  light  woman." 
Pinero  adds  a  social  and  a  moral  value  to  the  story 
and  in  so  doing  confuses  its  issues.  In  the  first  place 
Paula  is  not  a  courtesan.  At  any  rate  she  does  not 
remain  so.  She  neither  returns  to  her  old  ways  nor 
does  she  convince  us  that  she  had  been  heart  and  soul 
in  them  at  any  time.  It  is  clear  that  if  a  blow  is  to  fall 
it  must  come  not  from  her  persistent  viciousness  but 
from  her  pathetic  effort  to  clean  off  her  spots. 

What  will  be  the  forces  that  will  hinder  her  from 
cleaning  off  her  spots?  They  will  lie  inside  of  her  in 
her  own  character;  and  they  will  lie  outside  of  her 
in  society.  As  for  herself,  there  is  no  lack  of  will  to 
correct  herself ;  she  has  no  leanings  toward  a  relapse. 
And  society  offers  but  a  slight  problem.  Her  husband 
and  Cayley  are  kindness  itself.  At  the  worst,  county 
society  is  cold.  There  was  nothing  in  the  large  forces 
either  within  her  or  without  her  to  make  a  failure  of 
the  experiment.  The  first  signs  of  failure  come  from 
the  little  things,  —  the  perverted,  sensitive,  loving 
character  of  Paula  herself,  frustrate  by  her  own  in- 
ability to  reach  to  the  moral  standards  of  those  about 
her,  the  careless  society  that  affronts  her  more  by  ignor- 
ing her  than  by  snubs,  and  her  inability  to  get  the  love 
of  a  cold  young  girl.  It  is  the  failure  in  these  little 
things  that  brings  about  the  end.  It  is  not  incon- 
ceivable that  the  very  meanness  of  its  tawdry  failure 
might  have  brought  Paula  to  the  suicide  that  the  author 


ARTHUR  WING  PINERO  129 

forces  by  sterner  means.  In  showing  this  failure, 
Pinero  used  the  best  gifts  of  his  psychology.  Nothing 
can  excel  the  sympathetic  and  incisive  laboratory  work 
he  has  done  on  the  characters  of  Paula  and  Aubrey 
and  Cayley.  If  it  had  ended  with  this,  there  could 
have  been  no  caviling  at  the  theme.  The  old  lover 
was  introduced  in  order  to  enforce  the  drama  and 
not  the  thought.  While  it  looked  like  a  moral,  it  was 
in  fact  a  theatric  requirement.  This  return  (not  to 
speak  of  the  antecedent  fact)  is  so  improbable  as  to 
lose  validity.  The  theatric  catastrophe  arises  not  from 
society  nor  from  herself  but  from  unrepresentative 
accident.  It  illustrates  Frederick  Wedmore's  words, 
"The  radical  defect  of  would-be-serious  play-writing 
(is)  the  defect  that  at  a  critical  moment  there  is  some- 
times a  ready,  sometimes  an  unwilling,  sacrifice  of 
dramatic  truth  to  mere  theatrical  need."  The  result 
is  that  while  we  are  compelled  to  accept  the  outcome  of 
the  play,  we  cannot  accept  it  for  the  reasons  given  or 
as  having  any  meaning  outside  itself. 

"The  limitations  of  Mrs.  Tanqueray  are  really  the 
limitations  of  the  dramatic  form",  writes  William 
Archer,  and  Filon  was  of  the  opinion  that  "the  piece 
enlarges  the  province  of  the  theatre."  Though  we 
cannot  agree  with  the  first,  we  must  agree  with  the 
second  as  far  as  England  is  concerned.  A  new  era  in 
modern  English  drama  dates  from  the  performance  of 
The  Second  Mrs.  Tanqueray. 

Pinero  made  one  more  attempt  at  the  play  of  ideas 
in  The  Notorious  Mrs.  Ebbsmith  (1895).  If  at  any 
point  in  his  career  wisdom  and  discretion  have  left 


130   THE  CONTEMPORARY  DRAMA  OF  ENGLAND 

Pinero,  it  was  while  planning  this  play.  It  was  a 
period  of  abnormal  interest  in  Ibsen.  Pinero  had 
discovered  that  he  could  write  serious  plays,  that  he 
could  throw  ideas  on  the  table  for  the  wise  to  wag 
their  heads  over,  that  it  is  possible  for  a  story  to  carry 
deeply-concealed  meanings.  All  these  things  are  found 
in  the  next  play.  He  has  discovered  that  woman  and 
sex  are  problems.  The  play  is  full  of  Ibsenisms  vaguely 
transplanted,  Mrs.  Thorne  and  her  dead  boy,  Agnes 
and  the  Bible,  Agnes  the  atheist,  the  power  of  sex  over 
a  man.  The  play  was  a  failure,  and  Pinero  did  not 
repeat  his  venture  in  untried  regions. 

But  if  The  Notorious  Mrs.  Ebbsmith  showed  the  play 
of  ideas  gone  to  seed,  The  Benefit  of  the  Doubt  shows 
Pinero's  serious  art  cleared  of  impeding  theories. 
Among  Pinero's  works  this  play  occupies  the  position 
that  Mrs.  Dane's  Defence  holds  among  Jones's  works. 
Both  plays  are  dramatist's  plays.  They  represent  the 
serious  treatment  of  a  social  group  for  its  own  sake  and 
for  the  power  it  generates,  without  sentimentality,  or 
passion,  or  bitterness.  In  both  plays  intellect  governs. 
Both  are  fabrics  of  fighting  wits.  Perhaps  no  more 
delightfully  true  group  has  been  brought  together 
than  this  handful  of  ordinary  unheroic  people,  —  the 
dull  Fraser,  his  flighty  wife  Theo,  the  jealous  Mrs. 
Allingham,  the  worldly-wise  Mrs.  Cloys,  and  Sir 
Fletcher  Portwood,  cocky  and  self-assertive.  The 
nearest  any  of  them  come  to  heroism  is  when  they  act 
by  the  illusion  of  heroism.  No  one  is  the  center  of 
the  play.  The  author  plays  his  light  over  one  and  all, 
even  down  to  the  servants.    There  is  no  one  problem. 


AETHTJR  WING  PINERO  131 

The  Benefit  of  the  Doubt  represents  the  region  of  half- 
thinking,  half-willing,  resting  on  good-enough  in 
which  many  people  live.  In  exposition  it  gets  away 
from  the  formal  exposition  of  The  Second  Mrs.  Tan- 
queray.  The  play  had  only  a  relative  success  on  the 
stage.  It  was  too  cynical  and  sophisticated  for  ordi- 
nary interest. 

In  Iris  Pinero  takes  another  step  forward  in  tech- 
nique. It  is  to  be  noticed  that  as  he  perfects  his 
medium,  his  powers  of  popular  appeal  decrease.  Since 
1900  Pinero  has  been  the  dramatist  of  the  discriminating 
few.  Even  those  critics  who  refuse  Pinero  any  credit 
are  enthusiastic  for  7m.  7m  is  a  study  of  a  weak 
woman.  Recognizing  that  most  plays  are  based  upon 
the  theory  of  the  contest  of  wills,  he  evolves  a  play  that 
demands  no  such  clash.  The  play  is  in  fact  a  chronicle 
of  a  woman's  life.  She  is  seen  to  drift  from  episode  to 
episode  without  forethought  or  volition.  In  structure 
the  play  has  more  the  sequence  of  a  series  of  chapters 
of  a  novel  than  the  architecture  of  a  drama.  It  is 
supported  by  two  conventional  expedients:  the  first, 
the  device  by  which  at  the  outset  Iris  is  bound  by  the 
will  of  her  dead  husband  to  remain  single  if  she  is  to 
retain  her  fortune ;  and  the  second,  the  arbitrary  blow 
by  which  she  loses  her  fortune.  Here  again  the  theatric 
requirement  blows  an  unnecessarily  loud  blast  for  truth, 
but  the  use  of  these  devices  should  not  blind  us  to  the 
force  of  the  story. 

Of  His  House  in  Order  it  is  unnecessary  to  say  any- 
thing except  that  its  name  indicates  the  type  of  play 
to  which  it  belongs.    Mid-Channel  (1909)  is  Pinero's 


132   THE  CONTEMPORARY  DRAMA  OF  ENGLAND 

last  serious  work.  In  this  play  he  governed  himself 
absolutely  by  standards  of  rigorous  artistry.  Though 
the  play  is  presumed  to  carry  no  significance  beyond 
its  own  borders,  it  stands  beside  Iris  and  The  Thunder- 
bolt as  expanding  our  vision  of  human  nature.  This 
play  is  what  The  Second  Mrs.  Tanqueray  might  have 
been  if  treated  without  theatricality,  —  a  patient  study 
of  petty  events  and  annoyances  taking  on  themselves 
great  significance  in  the  mind  of  a  neurasthenic  woman 
and  leading  her  to  suicide.  Though  one  finds  himself 
disposed  to  haggle  over  the  details  of  Zoe  Blundell's 
death,  he  has  to  recognize  that  no  one  of  these  brought 
it  about.  The  author  is  careful  to  distribute  these  all 
about  her.  Though  she  knows  that  she  must  die,  it 
is  to  be  doubted  whether  the  woman  herself  knows 
where  the  train  started.  And  after  all,  it  all  lies  in  her 
sick  brain,  a  brain  suffering  from  the  malady  of  Mid- 
Channel. 

While  Pinero  has  received  the  rewards  of  his  works, 
it  is  doubtful  whether  our  own  times  can  estimate  his 
position.  Naturally  there  has  been  some  disposition 
to  depreciate  his  services  as  well  as  those  of  Henry 
Arthur  Jones.  That  will  not  be  the  disposition  of  the 
future  critic.  It  is  more  likely  that  Pinero  will  be 
hailed  as  one  of  the  first  masters  of  the  technique  of 
English  comedy.  He  has  shown  command  over  more 
varieties  of  dramatic  form  than  any  other  English 
dramatist.  As  in  the  case  of  Jones,  most  of  Pinero's 
work  was  done  before  1900.  Even  the  noisy  claims  of 
his  successors  only  throw  into  clearer  light  the  record 
of  his  achievement. 


CHAPTER  VIII 
The  Busy  Nineties 

In  a  fascinating  volume  entitled  The  Eighteen  Nine- 
ties, Holbrook  Jackson  studies  the  "new  movements" 
that  appeared  with  the  end  of  the  century.  These 
movements  are  usually  not  so  much  directed  toward 
a  particular  thing  as  they  are  infusions  of  a  new  spirit. 
Their  demand  is  not  so  much  for  a  particular  specific 
as  for  something  new.  "Not  to  be  new  is,  in  these 
days,  nothing",  wrote  Traill.  It  was  a  volatile,  change- 
able, anxious  period.  And  as  the  age  lacked  a  driving 
motive,  it  left  for  the  following  time  the  supplying  of 
solutions  and  itself  showed  only  the  desire  for  change. 

This  spirit  of  the  nineties  had  developed  some  years 
before  in  the  vision  of  a  new  social  organization  which 
was  to  be  forced  down  upon  men's  crowded  ways, 
correcting  not  only  the  circumstances  of  men's  lives, 
but  purifying  the  lives  themselves.  And  measures 
were  taken  for  the  establishment  of  institutions  which 
should  accomplish  these  ends.  Butler,  in  his  The 
Way  of  All  Flesh,  tells  of  the  monasteries  which  were 
to  be  the  citadels  of  the  new  social  principle.  And 
then,  as  the   broad  social  dreams  proved  illusory, 

133 


134      THE   CONTEMPORARY  DRAMA  OF  ENGLAND 

some  men  withdrew  into  the  recesses  of  individualism 
and  contrived  an  anodyne  in  the  workings  of  the  in- 
dividual soul.  The  Ruskins  and  the  Morrises,  the 
Hyndmans,  the  Toynbees  were  followed  by  the  Wildes, 
the  Beardsleys,  and  the  Beerbohms.  In  the  nineties 
the  voices  of  the  social  reformers  mingle  with  the 
voices  of  the  individualists  in  a  quaint  disconcert  of 
destiny  and  disillusion. 

In  this  general  movement  the  drama  now  began  to 
take  its  place.  It  had  been  drawn  into  the  social  arena 
through  the  emphasis  of  its  social  connections  by 
Matthew  Arnold,  H.  A.  Jones,  William  Archer,  and 
others.  The  end  of  the  century  produced  a  new 
social  program  for  the  theatre.  Now  began  public 
discussions  of  the  obligation  of  the  State  to  make  the 
drama  a  fitting  servant  of  the  people,  the  obligation  of 
the  people  to  use  the  theatre  for  their  own  upbuilding. 
Censorship,  national  theatres,  social  dramatic  thera- 
peutics were  much  written  about.  Criticism  arose 
to  new  power.  Newspapers  opened  their  columns  to 
the  discussion  of  dramas.  Plays  were  thinly  disguised 
tracts.  The  drama  was  being  evangelized.  More 
than  one  writer  promised  that  the  theatre  should  usurp 
the  place  of  the  church. 

And  along  with  these  broad  social  appeals,  by  which 
works  of  the  theatre  were  advertised  in  the  market 
like  so  much  merchandise,  there  came  signs  of  another 
disposition  among  the  dramatists  themselves,  a  dis- 
position that  was  to  render  futile  the  nice  visions  of  a 
great  national  theatre  ruled  over  by  an  art-enfran- 
chised people.    This  disposition  arose  from  the  neces- 


THE   BUSY  NINETIES  135 

sities  of  the  dramatist's  craft,  which,  continually  re- 
fining itself,  making  itself  more  exact,  came  to  demand 
a  smaller  stage  for  action,  a  more  genuine  cooperation 
of  the  arts  in  the  theatre,  a  keener  and  more  dis- 
criminating audience.  This  demand  came  from  the 
art  of  the  theatre  rather  than  from  the  blue  prints 
and  specifications  of  the  social  idealists.  It  was 
based  upon  a  no  less  sincere  belief  in  the  new  age  that 
was  at  hand,  but  it  saw  the  signs  of  this  age  in  more 
hidden  places.  And,  because  much  nonsense  had 
been  spoken  by  heated  advocates  of  the  "millennium 
around  the  corner",  it  saw  the  new  events  with  some 
quaint  humor,  and  it  protected  their  revelation  under 
an  affectation  of  the  grotesque  and  the  inscrutable. 
Bernard  Shaw,  Chesterton,  Barker,  Synge  are  born  of 
the  generation  of  the  nineties  coming  to  flower  in  the 
free  air  of  the  new  century.  Only  William  Sharp, 
Aubrey  Beardsley,  Oscar  Wilde,  expire  before  the  new 
century. 

"A  great  creative  period  is  at  hand;  probably  a 
great  dramatic  epoch.  But  what  will  for  one  thing 
differentiate  it  from  any  predecessor  is  the  new  com- 
plexity, the  new  subtlety,  in  apprehension,  in  forma- 
tive conception,  in  imaginative  rendering."  In  these 
words  by  William  Sharp  we  have  the  first  hint  of  the 
new  structure,  and  the  new  ideals  of  staging  which  in 
the  hands  of  Yeats  and  Craig  and  Barker  and  their 
fellows  across  the  channel  in  Germany,  Belgium,  and 
Russia,  were  to  claim  the  stage  after  the  dominion  of 
social  causes.  Meanwhile  the  old  conception  of  the 
theatre  as  a  thing  of  tricks  and  artifices  began  to  give 


136   THE  CONTEMPORARY  DRAMA  OF  ENGLAND 

way  to  the  idea  that  the  theatre  might  be  respected 
as  a  fountain  of  ideas.  Zola  began  to  be  known  for 
his  ideas  as  well  as  for  his  scandals.  Tolstoi  was  read 
and  acted.  Echegaray's  El  Gran  Galeoto  had  been 
done  in  adaptation  under  the  title  of  Calumny  as  early 
as  1889.  This  influence  from  across  the  Channel  was 
something  quite  other  than  that  of  the  "  Sardoudledom  " 
of  a  few  years  before.  It  was  causing  men  to  think. 
It  was  taking  the  theatre  into  their  homes,  a  place  in 
which  it  was  to  show  some  disposition  to  rest,  to  the 
discomfiture  of  managers.  It  was  hanging  upon  the 
stage  a  burden  of  causes.  But  at  the  same  time  it  was 
introducing  the  stage  into  highly  intelligent  circles. 

But  the  voices  of  the  new  artists  and  thinkers  were 
not  the  first  to  be  heard  in  the  busy  nineties.  The  older 
lusty  generation  of  declaimers  and  entertainers  and 
shockers  did  not  pass  away  in  silence.  They  were 
driven  into  the  noisy  limbo  "below  the  culture  line" 
to  the  theatres  on  the  outskirts  of  respectability,  the 
Drury  Lanes  of  lost  tradition.  The  too  much  argu- 
ment of  critics,  the  incubus  of  an  ill-digested  Ibsen,  the 
drove  of  plays,  like  fishes  in  schools,  coming  along  to 
give  an  impromptu  philosophy  of  life,  to  attack  the 
world-old  problems  of  humanity  with  the  little  weapons 
of  new-found  social  doctrine,  the  mock  thinking,  the 
lyric  prose  tragedy  of  discontent,  of  revolution  based 
on  ennui,  of  moral  law  derived  from  the  instant  whim 
of  the  weak  —  all  these  made  much  din  in  these  days  of 
change.  Many  attempts  were  made  to  force  the  old 
theatre  to  the  demands  of  the  new  age  before  the 
next  decade  was  to  find  that  what  was  required  was  a 


THE  BUSY  NINETIES  137 

new  organization  quite  free  from  the  trammels  of  the 
past. 

First,  the  older  managers  passed  away.  Irving  re- 
mained aloof  on  his  pedestal  until  his  death  in  1905. 
The  Bancrofts,  the  creators  of  a  new  order  in  the 
theatre,  had  retired  as  far  back  as  1885.  The  Kendals 
gave  an  increasing  amount  of  time  to  the  provinces, 
until  they  too  retired.  Augustus  Harris  and  Wilson 
Barrett  died.  The  vogue  of  the  Savoy  opera  hardly 
outlived  the  eighties.  Then  came  the  newer  generation 
of  actor  managers :  Tree  at  His  Majesty's ;  Harrison 
and  Maude  at  the  Haymarket;  Wyndham  at  the 
Criterion  and  Wyndham's  Theatre ;  Robertson  at  the 
Comedy. 

Among  authors  Henry  Herman,  W.  G.  Wills,  G.  R. 
Sims,  Robert  Buchanan,  —  the  hope  of  the  drama  in 
the  eighties,  —  died  or  were  relegated  to  minor  places. 
Pinero  and  Jones  stand  out  as  the  chief  figures  of  the 
decade.  Around  them  grew  up  other  dramatists  to 
ape  their  ways.  Sydney  Grundy  claims  to  be  some- 
thing of  a  contributor  to  ideas,  and  in  his  Sowing  the 
Wind  (1893)  provides  a  nine  days'  sensation  in  a  year 
of  sensations.  Outside  the  group  of  the  dramatists  of 
ideas  Oscar  Wilde,  at  the  beginning  of  the  decade, 
and  Stephen  Phillips  at  the  end  rise  to  popularity  and 
sink,  the  one  to  obloquy,  the  other  to  forgetfulness. 

All  this  interest  and  discussion  encouraged  managers 
to  try  their  hands  at  new  things.  In  1890  Mr.  Tree 
began  to  set  aside  one  night  a  week  for  the  production 
of  plays  "calculated  to  delight  and  charm  the  few" 
but  ill  suited  to  the  grosser  tastes  of  vast  audiences. 


138  THE  CONTEMPORARY  DRAMA  OF  ENGLAND 

This  was  the  first  sign  of  a  disposition  to  adapt  the 
professional  stage  to  the  new  movements  in  playwriting, 
and  pointed  the  way  to  a  more  flexible  organization 
of  the  stage.  The  first  "Monday  night"  was  given  to 
the  production  of  Stevenson  and  Henley's  Beau 
Austin.  After  this  Mr.  Tree  produced  Maeterlinck's 
The  Intruder.  Neither  of  these  plays  secured  critical 
approval.  In  1891  John  T.  Grein  established  his 
Independent  Theatre,  bringing  to  England  plays  of 
Ibsen,  Tolstoi,  and  Maeterlinck  and,  among  native 
playwrights,  giving  early  encouragement  to  George 
Moore  and  G.  B.  Shaw. 

In  1891  the  American  Copyright  Bill  was  passed. 
By  this  Bill  equal  protection  was  afforded  to  the 
printed  play  in  America  and  in  England.  This  meas- 
ure was  immediately  followed  by  a  great  increase  in 
printed  plays.  Following  the  lead  of  Gilbert,  Pinero 
and  Jones  began  to  print  their  plays.  Their  ex- 
ample was  followed  by  Grundy  and  Wilde  and 
Phillips.  The  custom  of  printing  plays  made  possible 
the  growth  of  the  greatest  reputation  of  the  period, 
that  of  George  Bernard  Shaw.  The  two  foundation 
stones  upon  which  rest  the  drama  of  the  early  twentieth 
century  are  the  experimental  theatre  and  the  printed 
play. 

Ibsen,  who  before  had  been  only  a  name,  now  comes 
fully  into  the  life  of  England.  His  message  is  spread 
on  the  stage  and  through  criticisms  and  translations. 
Charles  Charrington  and  Janet  Achurch  played  A 
Doll's  House,  June  7,  1889,  following  this  the  next 
year  with  Pillars  of  Society.    The  company  was  then 


THE   BUSY  NINETIES  139 

taken  around  the  world,  and  the  gospel  of  Ibsen  was 
spread  in  Australia,  New  Zealand,  India,  and  Egypt. 
Ibsen's  real  vogue  began  in  1891,  at  which  time  A 
Doll's  House  was  repeated  by  this  company.  On 
February  20,  1891,  Mr.  Herbert  Waring  and  Miss 
Elizabeth  Robins  presented  The  Master  Builder  at 
the  Trafalgar  Square  Theatre.  Three  days  later 
Miss  Florence  Farr  played  Rosmersholm.  The  now 
famous  Independent  Theatre  production  of  Ghosts 
occurred  March  13,  1891.  And  on  April  20,  two  young 
American  women,  Miss  Elizabeth  Robins  and  Miss 
Marion  Lea,  gave  Hedda  Gabler.  By  1893  there  had 
been  added  to  this  list  by  various  producers  The  Lady 
from  the  Sea,  the  fourth  act  of  Brand,  and  An  Enemy 
of  the  People. 

Interest  in  Ibsen  was  spread  largely  by  means  of 
the  printed  play.  Archer  reported  that  within  a  year 
after  the  publication  of  the  play  Hedda  Gabler  was 
known  as  well  as  Becky  Sharp.  The  uniform  edition 
of  the  prose  dramas  was  published  in  1891  under  the 
editorship  of  William  Archer.  Two  years  later  (1893) 
Archer  reports  that  of  the  four  plays  in  the  Camelot 
Series,  Pillars  of  Society,  A  Doll's  House,  Ghosts,  and 
An  Enemy  of  the  People,  14,367  copies  had  been  sold 
in  1892.  Of  the  uniform  edition  16,834  copies  had 
sold  in  two  years.  In  all  he  estimates  that  forty 
thousand  volumes  had  been  sold,  and  that  seven 
plays  had  been  successfully  produced.  The  Ibsen 
vogue  was  significant  in  England  in  two  directions. 
It  started  the  current  of  thought  toward  the  theatre; 
it  established  the  custom  of  printing  and  reading  plays. 


140   THE  CONTEMPORARY  DRAMA  OF  ENGLAND 

The  position  of  Ibsen  in  England  of  this  period  should 
not  be  misunderstood.  Strictly  speaking,  Ibsen  never 
was  popular  in  England.  The  number  of  plays  written 
on  his  model  has  been  very  small,  and  these  have 
been  for  the  most  part  either  immediate  or  eventual 
failures.  They  were  either  killed  immediately  by 
their  ugliness  of  outline,  or  they  were  killed  finally 
by  the  fact  that  their  mental  construction  would  not 
stand  the  test  of  study.  But  Ibsen's  indirect  influ- 
ence was  more  thorough.  Those  who  imitated  him 
did  it  badly.  Those  who  came  under  the  stimulus 
of  his  spirit  could  not  fail  to  be  made  more  honest  in 
thought,  less  artificial  in  workmanship  than  before. 
After  1890,  English  plays  can  be  pretty  clearly  divided 
into  those  which  have  felt  the  impress  of  the  Ibsen 
spirit  and  those  which  have  not.  And  the  presump- 
tion is  usually  against  the  latter  class.  It  was  not  that 
plays  had  to  be  Ibsenic  in  form  and  philosophy,  but 
that  they  had  to  be  purified  in  the  air  that  he  had  shot 
clear.  The  influence  of  Ibsen  on  his  blind  imitators 
has  been  unfortunate.  From  some  dramatists  he 
seemed  to  take  away  the  joy  in  work  as  well  as  the  joy 
in  life.  Their  plays  became  labored,  tepid,  stilted, 
and  reeked  of  a  half-baked  misanthropy.  This  motive 
represented  the  worst  aspect  of  his  influence.  The 
best  aspect  was  represented  by  his  heroic  testing  of 
formulas  and  renovation  of  values. 

Naturally  a  new  spirit  could  not  be  introduced  into 
English  drama  without  objection.    There   had   been 
rumblings  of  critical  disapproval  for  ten  years,. ever_ 
since  Jones  had  thrown  Saints    and   Sinners  as  a 


THE   BUSY  NINETIES  141 

bombshell  into  the  camp  of  English  respectability.  It 
had  been  increased  by  the  controversies  over  Grundy 
at  the  end  of  the  eighties,  and  in  1893  and  1894  it 
burst  like  a  fury  over  the  new  plays  of  Jones  and 
Pinero  and  the  productions  of  the  Ibsenites.  The 
champion  of  the  older  prder  of  critics  was  Clement 
Scott,  the  dean  of  English  critics,  long  the  editor  of 
The  Theatre  and  in  the  early  nineties  dramatic  critic 
of  Tndh.  He  had  as  aids  such  men  as  Robert  Bu- 
chanan, of  "fleshly  school  of  poetry"  fame,  and  many 
ecclesiastics.  The  leader  of  the  other  side  was  Wil- 
liam Archer.  The  difference  between  the  methods  of 
the  two  men  was  marked.  Scott  was  vituperative. 
Archer  was  calm  always.  Scott  indulged  in  person- 
alities; Archer  held  to  the  critical  point.  It  looked 
then  as  if  Scott  were  defending  the  standard,  the  con- 
servative taste,  the  abiding  values,  and  as  if  Archei: 
were  defending  the  violation  of  standard,  the  collapse 
of  taste.  Archer  defended  Jones  for  appealing  to  the 
public  in  advertisements.  Scott  held  that  this  was 
beneath  the  dignity  of  an  artist.  Archer  found  some- 
thing to  hope  for  even  in  melodrama.  To  Scott  this 
form  was  the  violation  of  all  art.  Archer  believed 
Grundy  was  one  of  the  first  of  England's  playwrights 
and  supported  the  new  morality  of  fearless  public 
discussion.  Scott  would  give  Grundy  no  such  place. 
Nor  could  he  see  how  a  man  who  "  dared  to  be  moral " 
could  soil  his  fingers  with  Zola  and  Sardou,  with 
Halevy  and  Dumas  fils.  In  the  year  that  Becque  was 
suing  Sarcey  for  flaying  his  play.  La  Parisienne,  the 
climax  of  English  critical  virulence  came.    After  the 


142  THE  CONTEMPORARY  DRAMA  OF  ENGLAND 

performance  of  Ghosts  at  the  Independent  Theatre, 
Scott  compared  the  play  in  The  Daily  Telegraph  with 
an  open  drain,  a  loathsome  sore  unbandaged,  and 
censm*ed  "the  gross  and  almost  putrid  indecorum  of 
the  play."  He  followed  this  with  an  anonymous 
attack  in  Truth  excelling  in  spite  anything  lately  seen 
in  English  criticism.  Then,  sick  at  heart  at  the  vul- 
garity of  the  stage  to  which  he  had  given  his  life,  he 
took  a  trip  around  the  world  and  returned  home  to 
die.  In  a  Schim'pflexikon  printed  in  the  Pall  Mall 
Gazette  under  the  title  of  Ghosts  and  Gihberings,  and  in 
an  article  in  the  Fortnightly  Review  for  1893,  The 
Mausoleum  of  Ibsen,  Archer  prints  a  list  of  the  epithets 
that  had  been  applied  to  Ibsen's  plays  by  British 
journalists.  Among  these  are  "abominable,  disgust- 
ing, bestial,  fetid,  loathsome,  putrid,  crapulous,  offen- 
sive, scandalous,  repulsive,  revolting,  blasphemous, 
abhorrent,  degrading,  unwholesome,  sordid,  foul, 
filthy,  malodorous,  noisome."  Ibsen  is  called  an 
egotist,  a  bungler,  a  suburban,  a  provincial.  The  con- 
troversy raged  again  in  November,  1894,  in  The  Times, 
around  the  head  of  Jones.  It  culminated  in  a  general 
condemnation  of  stage  plays  by  the  Bishops,  Cardinal, 
and  Pillars  of  London. 

Amid  such  events  the  censorship  stood  out  more 
prominently  than  ever  before.  Then  in  fact  the  censor- 
ship began  to  take  a  prominent  place  in  stage  con- 
troversy. When  immorality  was  only  that  of  innu- 
endo, and  was  addressed  to  the  sensibilities  rather 
than  to  the  intelligence,  the  censor  was  seldom  able 
to  devise  means  for  reaching  it.    But  when  immorality 


THE  BUSY  NINETIES  143 

came  into  the  theme,  he  had  something  he  could  deal 
with.  He  had  held  up  Camille  for  a  long  time,  until 
the  success  of  the  company  of  the  Comedie  Frangaise 
in  1879  had  given  Dumas  respectability.  He  had 
held  up  Frou  Frou.  Meanwhile  he  had  licensed  one 
of  the  naughtiest  of  French  farces.  Pink  Dominoes. 
Up  to  the  early  nineties,  plays  had  been  censored 
for  occasional  oaths  or  for  offenses  against  classes  of 
people  or  friendly  powers.  Now  the  chief  ground  of 
censorship  came  to  be  a  play's  treatment  of  matters 
of  sex.  As  a  rule,  the  more  dignified  the  treatment, 
the  more  likely  the  play  was  to  be  censored. 

This  situation  developed  to  its  height  during  the 
nineties.  The  topics  of  the  realistic  plays  were  no 
more  disagreeable  than  had  been  those  of  the  older 
plays.  They  were  merely  treated  unsentunentally. 
It  wasn't  the  subject-matter  of  the  new  drama  that 
was  objected  to,  but  its  denial  of  romantic  illusions. 
Archer  writes  of  the  censorship :  "  From  this  came  the 
double  entendre,  the  between-the-lines  meaning.  When 
Mr.  Burnand  introduces  us  to  a  variety  actress  or  a 
female  acrobat,  we  all  know  what  was  the  lady's  pro- 
fession in  the  original  French;  and  that  elastic  and 
convenient  term  '  flirtation '  covers  a  multitude  of  sins, 
but  covers  them  in  a  very  gauzy  fashion."  And 
Percy  Fitzgerald  speaks  of  the  fashionable  "disinfect- 
ing process"  by  means  of  which  there  is  evolved  the 
type  of  "innocent-guilty"  plays. 

The  importance  of  these  things  lies  in  the  fact  that 
through  an  external  control  either  by  the  government 
or  the  people  the  author  is  not  permitted  to  be  true 


144   THE  CONTEMPOBARY  DRAMA  OF  ENGLAND 

to  his  own  theme.  He  is  compelled  to  stultify  his  art 
at  the  source.  Now  the  true  dramatist  demands  for 
his  art  only  what  Maupassant  calls  "the  right  to  pre- 
sent truth  as  he  sees  it,  according  to  his  individual  im- 
pression of  reality."  Hardy  asks  that  a  novel  be  con- 
sidered an  impression,  not  an  argument,  and  he  quotes 
Goethe :  "  As  soon  as  I  observe  that  any  one,  when 
judging  of  poetical  representations,  considers  any- 
thing more  important  than  the  inner  necessity  and 
truth,  I  have  done  with  him."  These  demands  hold 
good  for  the  dramatist.  He  asks  only  the  right  to 
presents  his  individual  impression  of  life. 

The  fact  that  the  great  public  acting  arbitrarily 
through  its  organs  of  expression  or  oflficially  through 
its  government  will  not  permit  this  freedom  has  re- 
sulted in  one  of  the  most  important  movements  of 
recent  years.  This  movement  had  its  inception  in 
the  nineties,  found  its  expression  in  organization  in  the 
first  decade  of  the  next  century,  and  began  immedi- 
ately to  flower  into  new  playwrights  and  plays.  It 
represented  the  separation  of  the  smaller  from  the 
larger  audience,  the  isolation  of  the  few  who  demand 
a  high  standard  from  the  many  who  are  satisfied  with 
a  standard  of  the  good  enough.  It  provided  edifices 
in  which  these  few  may  be  protected  in  their  private 
rights  and  in  which  the  artist  may  be  protected  in  his 
sesthetic  imperatives.  There  was  nothing  snobbish 
in  this  movement.  It  rested  upon  the  selective  basis 
of  taste  and  understanding.  It  began  in  England  as 
an  attempt  to  avoid  the  necessities  of  ticket  selling, 
which  is  the  handle  the  Lord  Chamberlain  holds  to 


THE   BUST  NINETIES  145 

the  commercial  theatre.  As  it  proceeded,  it  tended 
to  form  groups  about  common  interests.  In  this  way 
it  accompanied  the  narrowing  of  themes  to  an  intimate 
and  incisive  standard.  The  development  of  the  new 
theatrical  organization  upon  the  unit  of  the  smaller 
as  distinguished  from  the  great  audience  will  be  treated 
in  the  next  chapter. 

Much  of  the  spirit  of  the  nineties  was  one  of  en- 
thusiasm and  promise.  But  there  was  the  reverse  of 
this  shield.  For  several  years,  from  1891  to  1895,  the 
"dramatic  renascence"  was  hailed.  And,  as  in  the 
case  of  socialism,  men  began  to  think  of  it  in  terms  of 
the  next  step.  But  these  enthusiasts  failed  to  take 
account  of  the  slow  moving  of  forces.  The  tempest 
about  Ibsen  died  down.  Then  failures  began.  Jones's 
Michael  and  his  Lost  Angel  lived  ten  days.  H.  V.  Es- 
mond's The  Divided  Way  and  Grundy's  The  Greatest 
of  These  were  badly  received.  These  failures  were 
partly  the  result  of  the  turning  of  the  tide  against  plays 
which  had  been  supported  in  a  spasm  of  enthusiasm. 
They  came  partly  because  the  dramatists  were  over- 
playing the  lead.  And  in  large  measure  they  came 
because  the  new  movements  had  taught  the  audience 
and  critics  an  intolerance  of  judgment.  As  an  ironic 
result  of  a  movement  for  reform,  the  critics,  having 
sharpened  their  weapons,  used  them  with  ferocity  on 
good  and  bad  alike. 

In  spite  of  the  interest  in  the  stage,  the  legitimate 
theatre  business  became  a  very  precarious  thing  in- 
deed. Managers  found  it  more  and  more  dangerous 
to  experiment.    This  was  not  altogether  because  of 


146  THE  CONTEMPORARY  DRAMA  OF  ENGLAND 

the  opposition  of  cheap  standards  but  because  high- 
class  audiences  and  critics  could  not  be  depended 
upon.  With  the  growth  of  interest  there  had  come 
the  breaking-up  into  camps,  the  bickerings  and  back- 
firings  of  new  and  old  movements,  new  and  old  critics, 
the  foreign  and  the  native  play.  As  dramatists  tried 
their  wings,  managers  retired.  Then  with  a  sweep  the 
new  craze  for  entertainment  began.  All  the  force 
that  had  been  used  to  recreate  the  place  of  the  drama  in 
society  was  now  turned  to  making  the  fortunes  of  such 
plays  as  Under  the  Red  Robe,  The  Sign  of  the  Cross, 
Trilby,  The  Prisoner  of  Zenda.  Gloom  fell  in  the  camps 
of  reform.  Men  thought  that  the  end  of  the  world 
had  come.  They  did  not  recognize  that  it  was  but  the 
breaking-up  of  the  old  groupings  preparatory  to  a 
new  organization. 

The  "Eighteen-nineties"  were  anxiously  listening 
for  new  voices.  They  were  willing  to  give  a  hearing 
to  anything  that  seemed  to  promise  a  fresh  note.  For 
this  reason  the  table  was  spread  with  some  wares  that 
before  might  not  have  been  offered.  A  few  years  be- 
fore the  nineties  the  ill-starred  pen  of  John  Davidson 
had  brought  forth  a  series  of  dramas  not  appropriate 
for  the  stage  but  of  a  rare  and  absolute  genius,  —  Bruce, 
A  Drama  (1886),  Smith,  A  Tragic  Farce  (1888),  Scara- 
mouch in  Naxos  (1889).  To  the  latter  had  been  set  a 
prologue  on  pantomime  that  promises  some  of  the 
later  positions  of  Maeterlinck  and  Gordon  Craig. 
And  William  Sharp  in  Vistas  (1894)  wrote  a  series  of 
short  plays  of  quite  remarkable  originality. 

It  was  characteristic  of  Oscar  Wilde   (1856-1900) 


THE   BUSY  NINETIES  147 

that  after  spending  his  life  on  other  kinds  of  writing, 
he  turned  in  his  last  five  years  of  work  to  success  on 
the  stage.  His  plays  were  thought  to  represent  a  high 
mark  in  English  drama.  We  now  know  that  they  de- 
serve no  such  position.  They  are  the  work  of  a  skilled 
craftsman  in  writing.  They  came  at  a  juncture  in 
English  affairs  when  their  qualities  would  be  accepted. 
Beside  the  more  sincere  work  of  other  men  they  de- 
serve the  more  critical  regard  they  have  lately  received. 

Wilde  possessed  the  gift  that  was  most  in  demand 
for  the  theatre  of  the  nineties.  He  had  style.  He 
could  take  easy  attitudes  on  other  men's  thoughts. 
This  ability  for  taking  attitudes  gave  him  credit  for 
knowing  the  world.  It  was  particularly  useful  as  a 
theatrical  gift.  But  Wilde's  theatrical  gift  is  a  super- 
ficial one.  Of  the  theatre  as  an  art  of  life  he  knew 
nothing.  He  was  interested  in  the  theatre  only  as  an 
art  apart  from  life.  Neither  in  structure,  substance, 
character,  grouping,  or  epigram  did  WUde  add  a  jot 
to  our  knowledge  of  men  by  his  plays.  And  his  plots 
were  of  a  variety  that  no  other  man  in  England  would 
have  dared  to  construct. 

What  then  made  Wilde's  popularity?  It  was  his 
"tact"  for  discovering  the  passing  mood  of  the  time 
and  expressing  it  gracefully.  No  writer  who  has 
written  in  English  has  floated  upon  his  age  as  has 
Wilde.  He  carried  the  art  of  superficiality  up  to 
genius.  He  was  nothing  apart  from  his  time,  and 
when  his  time  repudiated  him  he  had  no  life  left. 
His  repute  for  the  daring  and  original  came  from  his 
ability  to  surprise  men  at  themselves.    His  plays  are 


148  THE  CONTEMPORARY  DRAMA  OP  ENGLAND 

the  work  of  a  quick  and  brilliant  talker  who  anticipates 
the  ideas  of  his  fellows  and  gives  them  back  adorned 
with  crisp  words.  His  faculty  of  epigram  he  applied 
to  a  series  of  plots  of  the  most  astounding  triteness. 
It  hardly  seems  possible  that  a  man  of  Wilde's  wit 
could  have  accepted  the  plots  that  he  uses  in  his  first 
three  plays.  They  are  melodramatic  in  idea,  they 
teem  with  hackneyed  situations;  they  are  banal  in 
their  appeal  to  a  purely  theatrical  sympathy.  The 
characters  are  almost  totally  undifferentiated. 

The  models  of  his  structures  are  found  in  the  French 
plays  of  intrigue,  the  plays  of  hidden  paternities,  of 
midnight  visits  in  gentlemen's  chambers,  of  generous 
shielding  of  the  guilty  one  by  sister  or  friend.  After 
the  fashion  of  the  French  play,  the  action  of  three 
of  them,  of  Lady  Windermere's  Fan,  A  Woman  of  No 
Importance,  and  An  Ideal  Husband,  takes  place  within 
twenty-four  hours.  Wilde  managed  to  do  what  Grundy 
had  been  unable  to  do,  to  transfer  the  French  technique 
to  the  stage  of  an  English  theatre.  The  justification 
of  his  wit  is  the  same  as  that  of  the  French  turned 
phrase.  The  characters  live  in  a  thoroughly  artificial 
society.  They  talk  the  language  of  that  society,  a 
language  of  badinage  and  quips  and  apothegms.  It 
matters  not  that  in  so  doing  they  all  speak  alike. 
Within  the  limits  of  an  artificial  society  Wilde  has 
managed  to  differentiate  a  few  men.  He  has  created 
no  woman  worthy  of  passing  respect  as  a  creation. 
His  heroines  do  not  even  live  within  their  class;  and 
his  dowagers,  Mrs.  Cheveley,  Lady  Blacknell,  the 
Duchess  of  Berwick,  are  used  for  his  didactic  talk. 


THE   BUST  NINETIES  149 

After  The  Dtichess  of  Padua,  a  historical  melodrama 
of  the  sixteenth  centm-y,  and  Vera,  or  the  Nihilists,  a 
Russian  melodrama,  neither  of  which  was  produced 
in  England,  Wilde  wrote  Lady  Windermere's  Fan.  It 
was  produced  by  George  Alexander  at  the  St.  James's 
Theatre,  February  22,  1892.  The  situation  of  this  is 
a  palliation  of  the  French  triangle  play.  As  at  first 
presented  the  author  tried  to  conceal  from  the  audience 
the  identity  of  Mrs.  Erlynne  until  the  final  act.  This 
he  changed  after  a  few  nights.  His  next  play  was  A 
Woman  of  No  Importance,  presented  at  the  Haymarket 
Theatre  by  Beerbohm  Tree,  April  19,  1893.  Again 
we  have  a  purely  artificial  situation  play,  with  the 
past  rising  up,  the  son  of  shame,  the  parents'  struggle. 
Again  there  is  surprise  at  the  disclosure  of  a  fact  of  which 
the  audience  had  been  aware.  An  Ideal  Husband, 
presented  by  Lewis  Waller  at  the  HajTnarket,  January 
3,  1895,  is  a  story  of  political  and  business  intrigue, 
with  sale  of  cabinet  secrets  and  swords  of  retribution 
poised.  There  is  the  dangerous  woman  and  the  dull 
good  woman  and  much  moralizing  palaver.  In  The 
Importance  of  Being  Earnest,  presented  at  the  St. 
James's  by  George  Alexander,  February  14,  1895, 
Wilde  threw  away  his  melodramatic  themes.  The 
structure  is  for  the  first  time  flexible,  and  the  epigrams 
are  justified.  Wilde  calls  this  "a  trivial  comedy  for 
serious  people."  It  is  successful  because  it  is  thor- 
oughly detached  from  all  meaning  and  models.  Wilde 
had  discovered  in  the  graceful  foolery  of  farce  the  form 
best  adapted  to  the  expression  of  his  genius  on  the  stage. 
Here  for  the  first  time  the  language  and  the  form  suited 


150   THE  CONTEMPORARY  DRAMA  OF  ENGLAND 

the  theme  and  the  substance.  It  is  a  pure  farce  of 
quick  wits  and  refined  intelligences,  showing  how  high 
this  form  might  go  if  its  motives  were  made  more 
to  inhere  in  the  subtleties  of  the  mind.  Perhaps  be- 
cause it  was  so  playful  and  adept  it  was  Wilde's  best 
commentary  on  frivolous  society.  This  play  suggests 
what  the  English  theatre  may  have  lost  by  the  pre- 
mature closing  of  the  career  of  the  playwright.  The 
list  of  Wilde's  plays  is  completed  with  Salome,  written 
by  Wilde  first  in  French  and  accepted  for  production 
by  Sarah  Bernhardt.  This  is  one  of  the  first  plays  in 
Europe  of  the  Oriental  sensuous  school.  For  its  source, 
outside  of  Maeterlinck,  one  has  to  look  to  the  works 
of  the  French  decadents  and  of  the  Aubrey  Beardsley 
group  of  English  artists. 

The  influence  of  Wilde  was  considerable.  Not. 
many  could  copy  his  brilliance  and  wit,  but  all  could 
copy  his  copy.  There  grew  up  in  the  nineties  a  little 
school  of  comedy  of  manners,  dextrously  plotted,  well- 
tilled  little  gardens.  The  trick  of  "surface  manners" 
and  good  taste  had  been  learned.  Therefore  there 
was  nothing  else  to  do  but  write  delicately  about  de- 
nied topics.  It  must  be  said  that  none  of  the  comedians 
of  manners  had  quite  the  artificiality  of  Wilde.  They 
made  up  what  they  lacked  in  brilliance  by  a  sincerity 
of  interest  in  social  manners,  sometimes  by  a  manly 
note  of  scorn.  But  as  a  whole,  these  plays  are  like 
the  crackling  of  reeds  in  a  pot.  Haddon  Chambers.. 
(1860)  brought  from  New  South  Wales  a  little  note  of 
the  Empire  into  English  drama.  In  Captain  Swift 
(1888)   he  introduces  a  gentleman  thief  adventurer 


THE   BUSY  NINETIES  151 

from  the  "bush"  of  an  order  that  was  much  to  be  used 
later.  His  best  play  is  The  Tyranny  of  Tears  (1899), 
persistently  referred  to  as  showing  a  Wilde  influence. 
It  is  an  adroit,  expeditious  study  of  feminine  foibles, 
developed  with  only  five  characters  and  with  no  flag- 
ging of  interest  or  break  in  the  solid  structure.  Other 
plays  are  John  a'  Dreams  (1894),  Passers-by  (1911), 
Tante  (1913).  H.  V.  Esmond  (1869^)  deserves  to  be 
remembered  for  the  reaUsm  of  his  Grierson^s  Way, 
a  tragedy  in  a  Chelsea  flat.  Other  plays  of  his  of  a 
lighter,  more  sentimental  kind  are  When  We  Were 
Twenty-one  (1901)  and  The  Sentimentalists  (1902). 
To  the  sentimental  class  belong  the  comedies  of  R.  C. 
Carton  (1856-  )  The  Home  Secretary  (1895),  The  Tree 
of  ^Knowledge  (1897),  Lord  and  Lady  Algy  (1898). 
Mrs.  Craigie  (John  Oliver  Hobbes,  1867-1906)  at- 
tempted to  transfer  to  the  theatre  her  interest  in  tem- 
peraments in  Journeys  End  in  Lovers'  Meeting  (1894), 
written  with  George  Moore,  The  Ambassador  (1898), 
A  Repentance  (1899),  The  Wisdom  of  the  Wise  (1900), 
The  Bishop's  Move  (1902).  Cynical,  knowing  life  so 
well  that  her  knowledge  crystallized  into  epigrams, 
she  failed  of  command  of  the  stage  formula.  F. 
Anstey  in  The  Man  from  BlanJcleys  shows  a  minute 
observation  of  the  middle  class;  Isaac  Henderson  in 
The  Mummy  and  the  Humming-bird  writes  an  effective 
situation  play.  But  comedy  of  manners  failed  to  find 
the  key  to  the  age,  and  suddenly  the  writers  of  it  are 
left  high  and  dry. 

Stimulated  perhaps  by  the  demand  for  a  literary 
drama,  and  encouraged  by  the  success  of  Richepin  and 


152     THE   CONTEMPORARY  DRAMA  OP  ENGLAND 

Rostand  in  France,  George  Alexander  in  1900  com- 
missioned Stephen  Phillips  to  write  him  a  tragedy  in 
verse.  Phillips  (1868-1915)  had  made  himself  the 
most  discussed  poet  in  England  by  the  publication  in 
1898  of  Poems,  including  Christ  in  Hades  and  The 
Woman  with  the  Dead  Soul.  He  had  also  had  several 
years'  experience  as  an  actor  with  the  company  of  his 
cousin,  F.  R.  Benson,  in  whose  company  he  had  played 
lago,  Prosper©,  and  Ghost.  One  result  of  Alexander's 
commission  was  the  publication  in  1900  of  Paolo  and 
Francesca.  In  book  form  the  play  won  an  immense 
success.  Before  Paolo  and  Francesca  was  produced 
j  Beerbohm  Tree  had  produced  the  poet's  Herod  (1900). 
j^/  Thereafter  Tree  produced  Ulysses  (1902),  Nero  (1906), 

[//"  .    ^nd  Faust   (1908),   written    with    J.    Comyns    Carr. 

.  Jf  Paolo  and  Francesca  was  produced  by  George  Alex- 
ander (1901).  Aylmer's  Secret,  The  Sjn  of  David, 
Pietro  of  Siena,  and  one  or  two  other  plays  await  pro- 

'^         duction.     Phillips  was  extravagantly  hailed  upon  the 

, ,  publication  of  his  first  plays  as  "widening  the  realm 

of  poetic  imagination."  Some  said  that  a  great  poetic 
era  had  come  in  the  theatre.  Others  accuse  him  of 
staying  behind  "  singing  to  the  dying." 

Whatever  may  be  said  of  Phillips,  he  must  be  granted 
two  qualities:  a  true  lyrical  imagination  and  a  com- 
mand of  the  mechanics  of  the  stage.  But  these  did 
not  make  him  a  great  dramatist.  The  two  gifts  seemed 
in  fact  to  check  each  other.  His  most  successful  play 
was  Paolo  and  Francesca,  for  in  this  his  art  was  most 
flexible.  In  his  other  plays  he  undertook  themes  that 
cramped  his  lyrical  gift.    He  was  said  to  desire  to  go 


THE   BUSY  NINETIES  153 

back  beyond  the  Elizabethan  type  of  play  to  the  stricter 
models  of  the  classics.  This  choice  of  a  medium  was 
the  poet's  first  error.  It  came  perhaps  from  a  too  as- 
piring mind,  a  desire  to  join  with  the  great  poets  of  all 
time  in  the  themes  he  treated.  No  English  dramatist 
has  succeeded  in  writing  a  practicable  play  by  Greek 
models,  and  Phillips  was  not  equipped  to  succeed  where 
others  had  failed. 

Not  even  Paolo  and  Francesca,  which  had  some  of 
the  traits  of  the  Elizabethan  play,  was  as  successful  on 
the  stage  as  it  had  been  in  the  book.  In  compensating 
for  his  strained  design,  Phillips  depends  largely  upon 
elements  of  pageantry  and  verse.  His  plays  came 
to  be  seen  as  workmanlike,  but  small,  panoramas,  rich 
with  color,  instinct  with  music  and  poetry,  but  cold 
to  the  touch.  They  did  not  have  the  passion  of  the 
Greek  play  or  the  scope  of  the  romantic  play.  They 
were  little  pageants,  groups  of  beautifully  moving  sur- 
faces of  action.  They  were  expressed  in  exquisite 
poetry,  but  the  poetry  was  swamped  by  the  action 
and  the  pageantry.  Phillips  made  no  attempt  to  deal 
with  the  mind  of  his  own  time.  Only  once  did  he  come 
to  modern  England,  and  this,  in  The  Sin  of  David,  was 
to  avoid  the  ban  of  the  censor  against  the  treatment  of 
a  Biblical  theme.  It  is  not  probable  that  Phillips' 
plays  will  again  be  seen  on  the  stage.  But  they  will 
be  read  for  some  time  for  the  beauty  of  their  verse  and 
the  warmth  of  their  feeling. 


CHAPTER  IX 

New  Organization 

This  chapter  deals  with  the  new  systems  of  organiza- 
tion that  in  the  first  decade  of  the  new  century  were 
introduced  into  England.  The  demand  for  a  new 
organization  arose  out  of  a  growth  of  a  new  audience 
and  a  new  taste.  It  was  encouraged  by  the  influence 
of  the  dramatic  movements  on  the  Continent.  It  was 
made  necessary  by  the  increasing  governmental  and 
commercial  handicaps  under  which  the  old  organizations 
of  the  theatre  worked. 

For  some  time  it  had  been  apparent  to  the  best 

managers  of  professional  companies  that  something 

would  have  to  be  done  to  bend  the  existing  institution 

of  the  theatre  towards  the  newer  movements.    Of  these 

managers  the  man  with  the  most  discernment  and 

courage  was  Beerbohm  Tree.    We  have  seen  that  as 

early  as  1890  Tree  had  set  aside  Monday  nights  for  the 

production  of  experimental  pieces.     Later  he  had  given 

[morning  and  afternoon  performances  for  the  same  pur- 

)ose.    At  his  Afternoon  Theatre  he  presented  such 

)lays  as  ^n.  Enemy  of  the  People,  Hannele,  and  Hansel 

and  Gretel,  with  good  music.    Tree  had  been  active  in 

154 


NEW  ORGANIZATION  155 

the  organization  of  the  Costume  Society.  In  1904  he 
founded  the  Academy  of  Dramatic  Art  for  the  instruction 
of  actors  and  stage  directors,  costumers,  and  writers. 
In  1914  this  academy  had  a  large  Council,  with  eighty- 
four  distinguished  members  of  the  profession  acting  as 
associates.  Since  1905  he  has  made  it  a  custom  to 
give  each  year  an  elaborate  Shakespeare  festival  finely 
mounted. 

The  matinee  idea  was  practiced  as  a  means  of  experi-  V 
ment  on  new  plays.  It  was  used  also  to  avoid  the 
annoyances  of  evening  performances.  In  the  nineties 
Archer  and  Oswald  Crawfurd  had  suggested  four  o'clock 
matinees  on  the  plea  that  the  "man  who  has  dined  is 
the  one  great  enemy  of  the  intellectual  drama" ;  and 
"Max"  had  written  in  the  Saturday  Review:  "Before 
we  can  hope  to  raise  drama  to  the  level  of  other  arts 
we  must  undermine  by  every  means  in  our  power  the 
custom  of  regarding  the  theatre  as  a  jolly  place  in  which 
to  digest  food  and  sit  in  amity  with  our  fellow  creatures." 
With  the  thought  of  applying  this  theory  to  profes- 
sional productions,  Pinero  suggested  earlier  evening 
performances  and  later  dinners.  Matinee  performances 
formed  the  first  production  of  some  of  the  most  notable 
plays  of  the  recent  theatre,  among  them  plays  by  S^ 
Bernard  Shaw  and  Galsworthy's  Strife.  ■ ^ 

The  most  significant  efforts  were  those  that  were 
made  by  people  within  and  without  the  theatre  to  create 
an  auxiliary  organization  for  a  specialized  appeal.  For 
such  an  organization  models  had  already  been  supplied 
by  Paris  and  Berlin,  in  the  establishment  of  the  Thedtre 
Libre  in  Paris  in  1887  and  the  Freie  Biihne  in  Berlin  in 


156   THE  CONTEMPORARY  DRAMA  OP  ENGLAND 

'  1889.  These  theatres  were  known  as  free  theatres. 
They  were  intended  to  be  free  from  the  control  of  the 
government  and  of  the  ancient  traditions  in  playwriting 
and  acting.  Theatrical  conditions  are  not  the  same 
in  England  as  they  are  on  the  Continent.  For  this 
reason  freedom  means  a  different  thing.  In  England 
the  new  workers  desired  to  be  free  from  the  control  of 
the  censorship  and  of  a  hampering  moral  code.  More 
than  this,  they  wished  to  be  free  from  the  limitations 
of  the  commercial  system.  On  their  side  they  had  no 
need  to  complain  of  the  tyranny  of  traditions.  They 
were  more  likely  to  ask  to  be  permitted  to  make  strict 
regulations  of  art.  For  these  reasons  the  English  free 
theatres  were  not  bound  to  the  naturalistic  code  as 
werg  those  of  the  Continent. 
I  The  call  for  an  English  free  theatre  had  first  been 
SA/ made  by  George  Moore  in  his  Impressions  and  Opinions 
(1891).  The  man  who  put  this  call  into  effect  was 
John  T.  Grein,  who  in  1891  organized  the  Independent 
Theatre.  Like  Antoine  of  the  Theatre  Libre,  Grein 
was  a  man  of  commerce  with  a  vision.  Of  Dutch 
nativity.  Consul  General  of  the  Congo,  a  critic,  and  a 
traveler,  Grein  made  up  his  mind  to  introduce  Euro- 
pean drama  to  England.  In  1889  he  began  to  edit  a 
magazine  for  noticing  French  and  Dutch  pieces.  His 
establishment  of  the  Independent  Theatre  was  not 
without  portent.  It  found  its  first  home  in  the  little 
theatre  in  Tottenham  Court  Road  with  which  Marie 
Wilton  twenty-five  years  before  had  begun  a  new 
regime.  And  this  theatre  opened  its  doors  with  the 
same  play  with  which  French  and  German  free  theatres 


NEW  ORGANIZATION  157 

had  begu|i  their  careers.  The  production  of  Ghosts 
(March  1,  1891),  under  the  du-ection  of  Mr.  Cecil 
Raleigh,  was  a  slap  in  the  face  of  English  theatrical 
complacency.  There  ensued  the  campaign  of  abuse 
which  was  mentioned  in  the  last  chapter,  a  campaign 
in  which  the  intentions  and  the  morals  of  those  inter- 
ested in  the  performance  were  severely  impugned. 
Though  the  monetary  returns  were  small,  the  venture 
accomplished  the  designs  of  the  founder.  He  secured 
a  membership  including  such  men  and  women  as 
George  Meredith,  Thomas  Hardy,  A.  W.  Pinero,  H.  A. 
Jones,  and  Mrs.  J.  R.  Green.  Archer  wrote  for  the 
movement  in  the  Fortnightly  Review,  Moore  in  the  Pall 
Mall  Gazette;  A.  B.  Walkley  and  G.  B.  Shaw  soon  joined 
the  standard.  But  Grein  tells  us  that  the  roll  of  the 
members  never  exceeded  one  hundred  and  seventy-five. 
He  was  often  without  money,  supporting  the  productions 
out  of  his  own  means,  meanwhile  struggling  against 
the  censor,  and  sometimes  even  without  a  theatre. 
His  management  was  farsighted  and  diplomatic.  With 
none  of  the  militant  spirit  of  Antoine,  he  was  able  to 
make  many  friends  for  the  new  theatre. 

The  second  production  of  the  Independent  Theatre 
was  Zola's  Therlse  Raquin.  Then  followed  three  short 
plays,  one  by  Arthur  Symons,  founded  on  a  story  by 
Frank  Harris,  Theodore  de  Banville's  The  Kiss,  and 
George  Brandes's  A  Visit.  In  1892,  in  consequence  of 
a  dare  made  by  G.  R.  Sims,  there  came  George  Moore's 
The  Strike  at  Arlingford.  The  greatest  contribution  of 
the  theatre  was  in  opening  the  stage  to  Shaw  in  1892 
for  the  production  of  Widowers'  Houses.    In  1894  The 


158   THE  CONTEMPORAEY  DRAMA  OF  ENGLAND 

Independent  Theatre,  Limited,  was  incorporated  for 
the  production  of  Dorothy  Leighton's  Thyrza  Fleming. 
The  following  year  (1895)  brought  the  Paris  company 
of  Lugne-Poe  for  a  week,  playing  The  Master  BuildeVy 
Rosmersholm,  Pelleas  et  Melisande,  L'Interieur  and 
L'Intruse  in  French.  Between  productions,  Grein 
/  \  went  back  to  work  as  Antoine  was  doing.     The  Inde- 

M^  pendent  Theatre  lasted  seven  years  and  produced 
;   ^  twenty-six  plays  new  and  translated. 

't"  Out  of  the  ashes  of  the  Independent  Theatre  came  the 
Stage  Society,  incorporated  in  1904.  The  first  meeting 
for  the  organization  of  this  Society  was  called  by  Mr. 
Frederick  Whelen,  then  employed  by  the  Bank  of  Eng- 
land and  later  literary  secretary  to  Sir  H.  Beerbohm 
Tree.  The  meeting  was  held  in  William  Morris's  old 
rooms  in  Red  Lion  Square.  The  Society  was  estab- 
lished on  the  basis  of  subscriptions  and  has  been  kept 
on  this  basis.  The  advantage  of  this  system  is  that  a 
definite  income  is  provided  whereby  the  element  of 
speculation  is  eliminated,  and  the  performances  are 
technically  private.  As  no  money  is  accepted  at  the 
door,  the  censorship  is  avoided.  The  Society  has  paid 
its  way  from  the  first  and  has  set  aside  a  reserve  fund. 
Two  performances  are  given  each  play,  one  on  Sunday 
night  and  one  on  Monday  afternoon.  The  Society  has 
attached  itself  to  no  theatre  but  has  engaged  theatres 
for  particular  performances,  often  playing  at  the  Im- 
perial.    It  has  presented  plays  regularly  since  1899,  the 

I  number  of  annuar^productions  running  between  four 
and  eight.  The  membership  of  the  Society  in  1914  was 
about  twelve  hundred.    It  is  managed  by  a  large  council 


NEW  ORGANIZATION  159 

which  has  numbered  among  its  members  at  different 
times  J.  M.  Barrie,  Bernard  Shaw,  Gilbert  Mmray,  1 
Frederick  Whelen,  and  A.  E.  Drinkwater.  i 

The  record  of  the  Stage  Society  is  an  impressive 
one.  Its  pm-pose  lies  in  the  field  of  pioneering  rather 
than  in  popularization,  but  as  a  feature  of  its  work  it 
is  continually  offering  men  and  wares  to  the  popular 
theatres.  It  has  kept  well  ahead  of  the  popular  demand 
but  it  has  never  surrendered  to  an  eccentric  appeal.  Its 
contributions  to  the  English  theatre  have  fallen  into 
three  classes,  the  contributions  of  new  actors  and  pro- 
ducers, the  introduction  of  significant  foreign  plays  in 
translation,  and  the  support  of  new  English  writers. 
Among  workers  its  most  important  product  has  been 
Granville  Barker,  who  graduated  from  the  Stage 
Society  into  the  management  of  repertory  theatres. 
Many  of  the  productions  of  the  Stage  Society  represent 
the  first  English  performance.  The  Stage  Society 
started  with  Shaw's  You  Never  Can  Tell  (1900).  The 
same  year  was  given  Captain  Brassbound'y Conversion 
(1900).  The  hst  includes  Ibsen's  Pillars  of  Society,  The 
Lady  from  the  Sea,  When  We  Dead  Awaken,  The  League 
of  Youth  (1900) ;  Eugene  Brieux's  Les  Hannetons 
(1907);  St.  John  Hankin's  The  Two  Mr.  Wetherbys 
(1903)  ;  The  Cassilis  Engagement  (1907) ;  Gorky's  The 
Lower  Depths  (1903)  ;  Tolstoi's  The  Power  of  Darkness 
(1903);  MsLUgham's  A  Man  of  Honour  {1904) ;  Gilbert 
Murray's  Andromache  (1901) ;  Granville  Barker's 
Waste  (1907) ;  Joseph  Conrad's  One  Day  More  (1905)  ; 
Frank  Wedekind's  Der  Kammersdnger  (1907) ;  Tchek- 
hov's    The  Cherry   Orchard   (1913);   George   Moore's 


160  THE  CONTEMPORARY  DRAMA  OF  ENGLAND 

Esther   Waters   (1911) ;    and   plays   by   Hauptmann, 
>  Sudermann,  Heijermanns,  Gogol,  de  Curel,  Bjornson, 
/    Bennett,  Fiona  McLeod,  Schnitzler,  F.  0.  Francis, 
(        Houghton,  and  Strindberg. 

^The  example  set  by  the  Incorporated  Stage  Society 
has  been  followed  by  many  other  sociieties  with  similar 
y  T    pm"poses.    The  Play  Actors  were  formed  in  1907  for 
I    the  production  of  Sunday  performances  of  Shakespeare, 
new  English  plays,  and  translations.    This  society  has 
r      to  its  credit  the  discovery  of  Miss  Baker's  fine  play, 
j.\     *  Chains.    The  Stockport  Garrick  Society,  English  Play 
\  V  Society,  The  Oncomers  Society  (founded  1910),  The 
I  Drama  Society  (founded   1911)   represent  much  the 
same   purposes.    The   Morality   Play  Society  (1911) 
and  The  German  Theatre  Company  (1908)  serve  func- 
tions suggested  by  their  titles. 
I     More  vital  than  any  of  these  has  been  the  work  and 
influence  of  the  EUzabethan  Stage  Society.    The  So- 
ciety was  established  in  1895  by  Mr.  William  Poel,  after 
he  had  conducted  for  ten  years  the  Shakespeare  Reading 
Society.    The  work  of  the  Society  has  been  of  both 
an  archaeological  and  artistic  nature.     It  has  been  the 
purpose  of  the  director  to  revitalize  past  principles  of 
production.    To  this  end  he  has  been  tireless  in  research 
and  in  production.    From  1893  to  1913  the  Elizabethan 
Stage  Society  produced   fourteen  Shakespeare  plays, 
plays  by  Marlowe,  Beaumont  and  Fletcher,  Middleton, 
Ford,  Jonson,  Milton,  Moliere,  Goldsmith,  Schiller, 
Euripides,  as  well  as  the  Sakuntala,  Everyman,  Jacob 
and  Esau,  and  Arden  of  Feversham.    Among  the  most 
interesting  productions  was  that  of  the  First  Quarto 


NEW  ORGANIZATION  161 

Hamlet  (1900)  presented  in  Carpenter's  Hall  at  Oxford. 
And  one  of  most  far-reaching  influence  was  Everyman 
(July  20,  1901),  presented  by  amateurs  in  the  quad- 
rangle at  Charterhouse  in  the  open  air.  In  this  first 
performance  the  Creator  appeared  as  a  white-bearded 
man  with  a  halo,  and  the  part  of  Everyman  was  taken 
by  a  woman.  By  arrangement  with  the  Elizabethan 
Stage  Society,  Ben  Greet  took  Everyman  to  St.  George's 
Hall,  London,  in  1902.  This  production,  somewhat 
modified,  was  later  seen  in  America. 

These  things  were  largely  the  work  of  outsiders,  work- 
ing as  a  rule  in  narrow  surroundings.  There  had  for 
many  years  been  on  foot  in  larger  circles  a  project  for 
a  national  theatre.  The  movement  really  had  two 
sources.  The  first  was  in  a  plan,  often  broached,  to  do 
honor  to  Shakespeare.  The  second  was  in  a  broad  plan 
to  place  the  theatre  of  England  on  a  national  basis.  As 
early  as  1820  Charles  Mathews  had  suggested  the  found- 
ing of  a  national  theatre  at  Stratford.  In  1879  the 
Shakespeare  Memorial  Theatre  at  Stratford  was  opened. 
In  the  Fortnightly  Review  for  1889  William  Archer  made 
a  plea  for  an  endowed  theatre  which  should  glorify  the 
nation  and  liberate  dramatic  art.  Codified  plans  for 
this  institution  are  found  in  Archer  and  Barker's  Scheme 
and  Estimates  for  a  National  Theatre  (1907).  In  1908 
two  schemes  for  a  Shakespeare  Memorial  and  a  National 
Theatre  were  amalgamated.  A  citizen  of  London,  Mr. 
Richard  Badger,  offered  to  the  County  Council  of 
London  three  thousand  five  hundred  pounds  to  start  a 
movement  for  a  Shakespeare  Memorial.  By  1913  the 
committee  had  acquired  at  a  cost  of  sixty  thousand 


162   THE  CONTEMPORARY  DRAMA  OF  ENGLAND 

p>ounds  a  site  for  a  national  theatre.  The  House  of 
Commons  was  asked  for  the  support  of  the  State  in  the 
undertaking,  and  the  motion  was  "talked  out."  There 
the  matter  rests. 

The  demand  for  change  in  organization  came  not 
only  from  outsiders.  It  came  as  well  from  men  of  the 
theatre  itself.  The  faults  of  the  theatre  became  so 
pronounced  that  a  cry  for  repertory  theatres  began  to 
arise.  What  were  the  conditions  in  the  professional 
theatre  that  called  for  correction  ?  As  pointed  out  by 
the  reformers  they  were  the  following :  First,  long  runs ; 
second,  the  star  system;  third,  unsteadiness  of  em- 
ployment for  the  artist ;  fourth,  no  continuity  of  the 
company  unit ;  fifth,  insufficient  tuition  for  the  actor ; 
sixth,  the  prohibitive  cost  of  experiments;  seventh, 
the  debilitating  control  of  the  metropolis  over  the 
theatre  of  the  provinces.  All  these  faults  it  was  the 
purpose  of  the  new  repertory  theatre  to  correct. 

England  had  in  fact  had  a  repertory  company  for 
several  years.  Since  the  mid-eighties  F.  R.  Benson  had 
been  touring  England  at  the  head  of  a  provincial  com- 
pany, which  in  1886  he  had  established  in  the  Shake- 
speare Memorial  Theatre  at  Stratford  for  annual  runs 
in  Shakespeare  plays.  With  some  breaks  Benson  had 
maintained  his  association  with  the  Stratford  Theatre. 
For  fifteen  years  he  toured  the  provinces  of  England, 
Ireland,  and  Scotland,  venturing  but  seldom  into 
London,  playing  Shakespeare  and  the  classical  drama. 
According  to  Sir  Sidney  Lee  the  slogans  of  Mr. 
Benson's  campaign  are  "  Shakespeare  and  the  National 
Drama",  "Short  Runs",  "No  Stars",  "All-round  Com- 


NEW  ORGANIZATION  163 

petence",  and  "Unostentatious  Setting."  Up  to  1906 
Benson's  company  had  played  thirty  of  Shakespeare's 
plays,  those  omitted  being  Love's  Labour's  Lost,  The 
Two  Gentlemen  of  Verona,  All's  Well  that  Ends  Well, 
Cymbeline,  Measure  for  Measure,  Titus  Andronixms  and 
Troihis  and  Cressida.  Among  his  most  noteworthy 
achievements  have  been  the  playing  of  all  three  parts 
of  Henry  VI  and  the  playing  of  Hamlet  without  cuts. 
The  performance  lasted  six  hours,  one  half  being  given 
in  the  afternoon  and  one  half  at  night.  For  the  first 
time,  in  this  production  (Lyceum,  March,  1900)  an  Eng- 
lish audience  was  enabled  to  see  the  King  and  Polonius 
as  the  dramatist  had  created  them.  In  the  season  1899- 
1900  Benson  took  the  Lyceum  Theatre  and  played  eight 
plays  in  repertory,  including  seven  of  Shakespeare  and 
The  Rivals.  In  spite  of  many  handicaps  and  the  ridicule 
of  some  case-hardened  critics,  he  introduced  to  London 
the  first  true  repertory  company.  He  had  always  sup- 
plied actors  to  the  London  stage.  Now  he  was  sup- 
plying ideas  as  well. 

From  the  activities  of  the  Elizabethan  Stage  Society 
and  the  Incorporated  Stage  Society,  Granville  Barker 
stepped  nimbly  on  to  the  stage  of  professional  experi- 
ment. In  1904  Mr.  Barker,  who  had  produced  several 
plays  for  the  Stage  Society,  was  asked  to  produce  The 
Two  Gentlemen  of  Verona  for  the  series  of  Shakespeare 
revivals  which  Mr.  J.  H.  Leigh  was  giving  in  the  Royal 
Court  Theatre,  Sloane  Square,  then  under  the  manage- 
ment of  Mr.  Vedrenne.  But  Barker  was  not  interested 
in  Shakespeare  alone.  He  had  a  new  ax  to  grind,  the 
sharp  new  instrument  of  the  intellectual  drama.    As 


164   THE  CONTEMPORAEY  DRAMA  OF  ENGLAND 

Ibsen  had  been  the  rallying  point  of  the  stage  experi- 
menters of  the  nineties,  Shaw  served  the  same  purpose 
for  the  new  century.  Vedrenne  and  Barker  joined  in 
the  production  of  Candida,  which  was  presented  at  six 
matinee  performances  and  was  a  success.  The  two 
managers  continued  to  give  matinees  in  the  autumn  of 
1904  and  spring  of  1905,  and  on  May  1  of  the  latter  year 
the  Court  Theatre  came  under  the  management  of 
Vedrenne  and  Barker.  Thus  begins  one  of  the  most 
significant  experiments  of  the  new  stage  method. 

The  Court  Theatre  was  successful  from  the  start.  Its 
most  notable  achievement  was  the  discovery  of  a  sane 
method  of  management  in  mitigation  of  the  system  of 
the  commercial  theatre.  The  Court  Theatre  was  not 
a  repertory  theatre,  but  it  went  as  far  in  this  direction 
as  possible  to  a  commercial  theatre  at  that  or  perhaps 
any  time.  Barker's  best  characteristic  as  an  artist  and 
manager  has  been  his  ability  to  keep  his  feet  on  the 
ground.  He  showed  the  qualities  needed  for  an  organ- 
izer of  a  new  theatre,  alertness  and  courage  combined 
with  common  sense  and  an  adherence  to  standards.  He 
believes  with  Irving  that  art  should  pay  for  itself.  For 
this  reason  he  always  withdrew  plays  when  receipts 
began  to  fall.  Plays  were  given  as  long  as  the  interest 
was  healthy  and  unstimulated.  Meanwhile,  matinees 
of  other  plays  were  given. 

The  Court  Theatre  was  notable  for  natural  and  culti- 
vated acting,  and  for  its  encouragement  of  the  new 
drama.  The  most  valuable  service  lay  in  raising  Shaw 
to  popularity.  Of  the  nine  hundred  and  eighty-eight 
performances  given  during  the  three  years  of  this  regime. 


NEW  ORGANIZATION  165 

seven  hundred  and  one  were  of  Shaw  plays.  Eleven  out 
of  the  thirty-two  different  plays  were  written  by  Shaw. 
In  order  of  performances  these  plays  are:  Candida, 
John  Bull's  Other  Island,  How  He  Lied  to  Her  Husband, 
You  Never  Can  Tell,  Man  and  Superman,  Major  Bar- 
bara, Captain  Brassbound's  Conversion,  The  Doctor's 
Dilemma,  The  Philanderer,  Don  Juan  in  Hell  (from  Man 
and  Superman),  The  Man  of  Destiny.  If  the  Court 
Theatre  borrowed  some  strength  from  Shaw,  it  paid 
it  out  again  in  service  to  other  dramatists.  The  list 
of  plays  it  produced  comprises  the  most  important  titles 
of  the  decade.  John  Galsworthy  contributed  to  this 
theatre  The  Silver  Box;  Granville  Barker,  The  Voysey 
Inlieritance ;  Housman  and  Barker,  Prunella;  St. 
John  Hankin,  The  Return  of  the  Prodigal  and  The  Char- 
ity that  Began  at  Home.  Three  of  Gilbert  Murray's 
extraordinarily  vivid  transcriptions  of  Greek  drama, 
Electra,  The  Hippolytu^,  The  Trojan  Women,  were  pro- 
duced at  this  theatre,  and  there  were  plays  by  Ibsen, 
Maeterlinck,  Maurice  Hewlett,  and  John  Masefield. 

From  the  Court  Theatre  the  associated  managers 
went  in  the  season  1907-1908  to  the  larger  Savoy  and 
there  repeated  several  of  the~successes  "or"tEe  other 
house  and  added  CoBsar  and  Cleopatra,  Arms  and  the 
Man,  Gilbert  Murray's  Medea,  and  Galsworthy's  Joy 
to  their  list.  During  this  season  the  same  managers 
gave  The  Devil's  Disciple  at  the  Queen's  Theatre  and 
conducted  a  series  of  special  matinees  at  the  Haj^ajls^fc 
Theatre,  presenting  Shaw's  Getting  Married  and  Mase- 
^eld'S^he  Tragedy  of  Nan.  The  production  of  Strife 
in  a  series  of  matinees  at  the  Duke  of  York's  Theatre 


166   THE  CONTEMPORAEY  DRAMA  OF  ENGLAND 

in  March,  1909,  later  transferred  for  evening  per- 
formances to  the  Haymarket  Theatre,  establishes  the 
connection  with  Mr.  Charles  Frohman  which  was  to 
culminate  in  the  Duke  of  York's  Repertory  Theatre. 

The  Court  Theatre  had  not  been  a  true  repertory 
theatre.  But  it  so  introduced  the  repertory  idea  as  to 
lead  Charles  Frohman  to  undertake  one  of  his  most 
notable  experiments.  The  Duke  of  York's  Theatre  was 
opened  February  21,  1910,  as  a  repertory  theatre  under 
the  direction  of  Mr.  Granville  Barker.  At  first  Mr. 
Barker  had  full  command  of  the  enterprise.  As  time 
went  on  he  found  his  ideas  bent  by  the  counsel  of  other 
men.  For  this  reason  the  season  as  a  whole  does 
not  represent  a  consistent  theory  resolutely  carried  out. 
At  the  outset  of  the  enterprise  its  spirit  was  expressed 
by  Mr.  Frohman :  "  A  repertory  theatre  should  be 
the  first  home  of  the  ambitious  young  dramatist.  I 
advise  him  to  learn  the  conventions  of  the  stage,  but 
chiefly  that  he  may  be  able  to  disregard  them.  I  have 
no  preference  for  any  particular  kind  of  play.  I  want 
what  is  good  of  any  kind.  One  sometimes  hears  it 
said,  *  A  good  thing,  but  not  a  play.'  This  is  one  of  the 
kinds  I  want." 

Whatever  one  may  say  of  the  list  of  plays  presented 
by  the  Duke  of  York's  Theatre,  it  would  hardly  be 
charged  that  the  plays  were  conventional.  The  ma- 
jority of  them  violate  the  older  definitions  of  a  play. 
But  though  they  were  all  daring  enough,  they  were  not 
the  work  of  new  writers.  All  of  the  writers  whose 
plays  were  produced  were  well-known  men  of  letters. 
.  No  play  of  an  unknown  man  was  undertaken.    During 


NEW  ORGANIZATION  167 

seventeen  weeks  there  were  one  hundred  and  twenty- 
eight  performances  of  ten  plays.  The  season  opened 
with  Galsworthy's  Justice.  Two  nights  later  Shaw's 
Misalliance  was  produced.  In  inaugurating  the  under- 
taking with  these  two  plays,  the  one  a  bourgeois  tragedy 
of  unrelieved  intensity,  the  other  one  of  the  most  con- 
versational of  Shaw's  discussion  plays,  the  new  manage- 
ment sufficiently  elevated  the  house  above  the  general. 
This  caviare  impression  was  borne  out  by  such  plays  as 
Barrie's  Old  Friends,  Meredith's  The  SerUimentalists, 
Barker's  The  Madras  House,  and  Elizabeth  Baker's 
Chains,  all  plays  of  a  sustained  intellectual  appeal  or  of 
a  rare  and  inscrutable  artistry.  Against  the  impression 
of  these  plays  such  lighter  pieces  as  Barrie's  The  Twelve 
Pound  Look,  Pinero's  Trelawny  of  the  "  Wells"  (revival), 
Housman  and  Barker's  Prunella,  and  Anthony  Hope 
and  Cosmo  Gordon  Lennox's  Helena's  Path  were  power- 
less to  raise  the  spirits.  The  short  season  closed  on  a 
record  of  interesting  experiment  but  of  no  success  in 
solving  the  problems  of  the  repertory  theatre.  Though 
he  had  lost  heavily  by  the  venture,  Mr.  Frohman 
promised  to  try  again,  but  the  theatre  was  not  reopened. 
Viewed  in  retrospect  the  repertory  experiment 
showed  several  things.  It  was  easier  to  create  authors 
than  it  was  to  create  an  audience.  The  plays  were  all 
of  a  high  level  of  artistry,  so  high  in  fact  that  there 
was  not  an  audience  large  enough  in  London  to  support 
them.  The  "smaller  audience"  of  which  so  much  has 
been  expected  hardly  sufficed  to  support  a  frequent 
change  of  bill.  The  business  system  for  handling  a  rep- 
ertory theatre  is  much  more  difficult  than  that  required 


168  THE  CONTEMPORARY  DRAMA  OP  ENGLAND 

for  handling  the  ordinary  commercial  run.  The  prob- 
lems of  publicity  and  of  the  distribution  of  tickets  are  so 
complex  as  to  point  to  the  need  of  a  subscription  system. 
Moreover,  the  expense  of  handling  the  frequent  changes 
of  bill  on  the  stage  was  great.  For  acting  and  actors  the 
repertory  system  is  favorable.  But  for  authors  it  is  not 
so  profitable.  The  Duke  of  York's  Repertory  Theatre 
subjected  the  repertory  theory  to  an  extreme  test  and 
only  partially  supplied  solutions  for  the  problems. 

The  results  reached  at  the  Duke  of  York's  Theatre 
were  paralleled  by  the  promised  repertory  venture  of 
'  Mr..  Herbert  Trench.  Mr.  Trench  expected  to  put  into 
practice  a  diluted  repertory  idea  at  the  Haymarket 
Theatre.  In  fact  he  gave  beautiful  productions^  to 
four  excellent  plays  by  the  long  run  system.  Chief  of 
these  was  The  Blue  Bird,  which  had  the  unprecedented 
run  (for  a  modern  classic)  of  two  years.  Nor  did 
Barker  himself  stick  to  the  repertory  plan.  After  leav- 
ing Mr.  Frohman's  theatre  he  started  out  at  the  Little 
Theatre  in  John  Street,  Adelphi,  with  Fanny's  First 
Play,  which  had  a  run  of  over  five  hundred  performances. 
And  Vedrenne  and  Eadie,  who  with  Barker  had  worked 
for  the  repertory  idea,  took  the  Royalty  and  performed 
Arnold  Bennett's  Milestones  for  hundreds  of  nights.  The 
last  promise  of  a  repertory  theatre  in  London  was  made 
by  Frederick  Whelen  in  1911,  but  the  plan  was  not 
realized. 

If  the  repertory  theatre  idea  had  met  a  setback  in 

the  metropolis  it  had  been  more  successful  in  the  prov- 

\  inces.     Some  one  has  said  that  London  has  a  repertory 

I  spread  before  it  all  the  time.    But  this  is  not  the  case 


NEW  ORGANIZATION  169 

in  the  smaller  cities.  During  the  last  decade  of  the  old 
century  there  had  been  a  decrease  rather  than  an 
increase  in  the  number  and  quality  of  the  theatrical 
offerings  in  the  great  English  cities  outside  of  London. 
And  so  the  first  full  expression  as  well  as  the  first  suc- 
cess of  the  repertory  theatre  idea  came  in  the  English 
cities  of  the  second  class  in  population.  One  of  the 
most  notable  movements  of  the  new  century  has  been 
to  broaden  the  field  of  activity  of  the  theatre  from  a 
center  in  London  to  cover  the  map  of  the  British  islands. 

As  Barker's  name  leads  any  discussion  of  the  London 
repertory  theatre,  the  name  of  Miss  A.  E.JF.  Horniman 
is  found  to  dominate  achievements  in  the  provinces. 
Miss  Horniman,  a  woman  of  independent  resources, 
had  shown  her  interest  in  the  new  stage  as  far  back  as 
1894,^  when  she  had  provided  the  money  for  Miss 
Florence  Farr's  performance  of  Arms  and  the  Man  at  the 
Avenue  Theatre.  In  1903  she  became  interested  in 
Mr.  Yeats'  plans  for  an  Irish  repertory  theatre,  and 
bought  and  remodeled  the  Mechanics  Institute  Hall, 
which  she  turned  over  to  the  company  of  the  Irish 
National  Theatre  as  the  Abbey  Theatre  in  1904,  rent 
free  for  six  years.  This  benefaction  went  far  toward 
establishing  the  work  of  the  Irish  players. 

Miss  Horniman  opened  her  Manchester  Repertory 
Theatre  in  1907  at  the  Midland  Theatre.  The  same 
year  she  bought  the  Gaiety  Theatre,  remodeled  it,  and 
opened  it  in  the  fall  of  1908  with  its  own  company, 
equipment,  code  of  management,  and,  before  long,  its 
own  authors.  The  aims  of  the  new  theatre  had  been 
outlined  in  1907 :  "(a)  A  repertory  theatre  with  a  regular 


170   THE  CONTEMPORARY  DRAMA  OF  ENGLAND 

change  of  program,  not  wedded  to  any  one  school 
of  dramatists  but  thoroughly  catholic,  embracing  the 
finest  writing  of  the  best  authors  of  all  ages  and  with 
an  especially  widely-open  door  to  present-day  British 
writers,  who  will  not  now  need  to  sigh  in  vain  for  a 
hearing,  provided  only  that  they  have  something  to 
say  worth  listening  to,  and  say  it  in  an  interesting  and 
original  manner. 

"(b)  A  permanent  Manchester  stock  company  of 
picked  front-rank  actors. 

"  (c)  EflScient  production. 

"  (d)  Popular  prices." 
"*  The  repertory  standard  so  outlined  has  been  upheld 
from  the  start.  Under  the  direction  of  Miss  Horniman 
and  the  directors,  Mr.  B.  Iden  Payne  and  Mr.  Lewis 
Casson,  an  efficient  company  has  been  provided. 
During  the  regular  season  it  played  to  successful  busi- 
ness in  Manchester  and  special  tours  were  organized 
to  London,  Dublin,  Glasgow,  and  America.  It  has 
sent  out  its  actors  into  other  theatres  in  the  provinces 
and  in  London.  In  repertory  it  has  maintained  a  true 
catholicity.  There  have  been  produced  plays  by 
Euripides,  Shakespeare,  Beaumont  and  Fletcher,  Sheri- 
dan, Goldsmith,  Ben  Jonson,  and  a  full  complement 
of  modern  authors.  More  than  this,  this  theatre  in- 
augurated a  Midland  school  of  playwrights.  The  first 
new  production  was  Charles  McEvoy's  severely  realistic 
I  study,  David  Ballard.  Stanley  Houghton's  Hindle 
Wakes  and  The  Younger  Generation  were  both  first  per- 
formed by  the  Manchester  players,  as  was  Harold 
Brighouse's  The  Odd  Man  Out.    In  addition  to  these, 


NEW  ORGANIZATION  171 

Basil  Dean,  Allen  Monkhouse,  and  half  a  dozen  other 
successful  writers  have  received  their  first  encourage- 
ment at  this  theatre.  In  late  years  there  has  been  a 
little  thinning  down  of  the  company  and  of  the  corps  of 
authors  on  account  of  the  allurements  of  London.  This 
seems  to  suggest  one  of  the  great  problems  for  the  rep- 
ertory theatre. 

The  Manchester  Repertory  Theatre  was  a  mother 
of  theatres.  In  1904  the  Scottish  Playgoers,  Lim- 
ited, had  been  established  in  Glasgow  after  the  fashion 
of  the  London  Stage  Society.  In  1909  the  Scottish 
Repertory  Theatre  was  established  to  continue  the 
work  of  the  Playgoers.  The  theatre  is  in  every  sense 
a  citizens'  theatre,  established  by  Scotsmen  to  make 
Scotland  independent  of  the  London  Theatre.  But  the 
Scottish  theatre  is  far  more  eclectic  than  is  the  Irish 
Theatre.  It  has  presented  original  plays  by  J.  J.  Bell, 
Harold  Brighouse,  Harold  Chapin,  Neil  Monro,  and  its 
list  of  borrowed  pieces  is  representative.  This  theatre 
like  others  of  its  class  depends  upon  the  support  of  the 
"nucleus  audience." 

The  Liverpool  Repertory  Theatre  was  established  in 
1911  on  a  limited  liability  plan  with  eight  hundred 
shareholders.  Though  well  managed,  the  company 
failed  to  secure  support,  and  the  end  of  the  second 
season  saw  a  deficit  of  two  thousand  pounds.  In  1914 
was  introduced  the  plan  of  managing  the  theatre  by  the 
Commonwealth  Plan.  Actors,  actresses,  attendants, 
stage  staff,  orchestra,  —  all  share  the  obligations  and 
the  profits.  Minunum  fixed  charges  are  set  for  all 
purposes,  and  income  above  these  is  shared.    This 


172   THE  CONTEMPORARY  DRAMA  OF  ENGLAND 

is  the  first  use  of  this  plan  of  theatre  management  in 
England. 

In  1913  the  Birmingham  Repertory  Theatre  was 
established,  and  in  1914  Lord  Howard  de  Walden  sub- 
sidized the  Welsh  National  Drama  Company,  The 
best  work  that  has  come  out  of  this  latter  company  has 
been  J.  O.  Francis's  Change,  which  was  awarded  the 
Welsh  Drama  Competition  prize  in  1912.  In  1911  a 
Repertory  Theatre  Association  was  established  among 
the  theatres  of  London  and  the  provinces  in  the  inter- 
ests of  the  repertory  plan. 

The  problem  of  the  repertory  theatre  has  not  been 
solved.  Barker  gave  it  a  test  in  London  and  discarded 
it  for  a  time.  It  had  a  greater  immediate  success  in  the 
provinces  because  of  the  demand  there  for  entertainment 
of  a  high  class.  That  this  demand  was  a  little  artificial, 
the  result  of  much  talk  about  the  drama,  there  seems 
little  doubt.  The  hardest  things  the  repertory  theatres 
have  had  to  fight  against  are  division  in  the  councils  of 
management  and  defections  from  the  ranks  at  the  call 
of  the  metropolis.  Another  thing  that  subjects  the 
repertory  scheme  to  strain  is  a  striking  success  in 
one  of  its  plays.  According  to  present  systems  of 
support,  there  is  no  way  in  art  or  commercial  common- 
sense  to  combat  the  run  of  a  play  that  the  people  want 
to  see.  In  London  this  has  served  to  perpetuate  the 
long  run ;  in  the  provincial  theatres  it  has  operated  to 
divide  the  companies.  Tree's  apothegm  "When  is  a 
Repertory  Theatre  not  a  Repertory  Theatre?  When 
it  is  a  success",  contains  much  truth  in  a  nutshell.  Per- 
haps the  chief  value  of  the  repertory  theatre  has  been 


NEW  ORGANIZATION  173 

as  a  ground  of  experiment  and  an  incentive  to  composi- 
tion. 

Among  the  theatre  movements  of  the  new  century  the 
one  that  has  had  the  largest  measure  of  success  is  the 
Irish  National  Theatre.  This  theatre  was  established 
at  a  time  to  take  at  the  flood  the  interest  in  things  ( 
theatrical  that  had  been  developing  in  Europe.  Its 
growth  was  aided  by  local  conditions  and  by  opportune 
outside  help.  It  had  a  spiritually  coherent  audience 
to  appeal  to,  it  developed  in  a  nation  that  had  always 
been  known  for  histrionic  gifts,  it  appealed  to  a  people 
who  have  a  faculty  for  supporting  "causes",  and  it  pro- 
vided a  means  of  expression  for  an  acute  spirit  of  nation- 
alism. Moreover,  it  made  good  friends,  not  the  least 
serviceable  of  whom  was  the  Englishwoman,  Miss 
Horniman,  who  first  provided  the  company  a  theatre. 
In  a  large  sense  the  Irish  Theatre  must  be  considered 
a  very  successful  local  manifestation  of  a  movement 
which  was  active  throughout  Europe. 

The  Irish  Theatre  is  distinguished  from  other  move- 
ments in  theatre  organization  by  the  fact  that  it  alone 
started  as  a  movement  among  writers  rather  than  among 
producers.  At  this  point  tKe  spirit  of  the  Irish  renas- 
cence enters  to  distinguish  this  theatre.  Of  the  earlier 
writers  in  this  renascence  few  were  dramatists.  They 
were  workers  in  a  literature  far  removed  from  the  rigor- 
ous rules  of  the  theatre.  The  Irish  theatre  was  the 
result  of  the  marrying  of  the  Irish  lyrical  and  story- 
telling genius  with  the  renascence  of  the  theatre  in  other 
countries.  The  men  who  were  responsible  were  those 
who  had  been  in  contact  with  the  latest  movements  on 


174  THE  CONTEMPORARY  DRAMA  OF  ENGLAND 

the  continent.  William  Butler  Yeats  was  a  mystic  and 
decadent  who  had  been  in  Paris  during  the  days  of 
Antoine's  experiment  with  the  Theatre  Libre.  George 
Moore  had  been  educated  in  the  French  studios.    In 

1891  he  had  worked  for  a  free  theatre  in  London;   in 

1892  he  had  written  for  this  theatre  The  Strike  at  Arling- 
ford.  Edward  Martyn  was  the  writer  of  the  most 
severely  Ibsenic  play  of  the  decade.  Like  Yeats,  J.  M. 
Synge  had  cultivated  his  mind  on  the  Continent  before 
he  turned  his  pen  to  the  treatment  of  primitive  folk  of 
his  own  race.  Only  Lady  Gregory  had  been  untouched 
by  the  movements  of  other  countries  and  now  main- 
tained her  pure  Irish  outlook. 

Though  the  Irish  theatre  started  as  a  part  of  a  world 
movement,  it  contrived  to  make  a  most  significant 
contribution  to  this  movement.  The  organizers  were 
fortunate  in  their  lack  of  resources  in  the  theatre.  While 
the  Englishman  and  the  Frenchman  had  to  discard  the 
old  before  he  could  establish  a  new  institution,  the 
Irishman  was  hampered  by  no  heavy  theatrical  machin- 
ery that  could  hang  like  an  incubus  on  his  efforts. 
This  poverty  in  resources  compelled  the  development 
of  the  virtues  that  have  been  most  serviceable,  the 
virtues  of  a  true  amateur  spirit,  of  a  natural  code  of 
acting,  of  simple  and  unspoiled  composition  of  plays. 
It  compelled  the  organizers  to  begin  at  the  beginning 
and  gave  them  all  the  advantages  of  so  beginning  in  the 
possibility  provided  for  educating  audience,  players, 
and  playwrights. 

The  Irish  Theatre  has  had  a  significant  place  in  the 
history  of  the  recent  English  movements  of  the  theatre. 


NEW   ORGANIZATION  175 

This  theatre  has  been  for  England  as  well  as  for  Ireland 
a  trymg  ground,  an  experiment  in  the  return  to  first 
principles.  No  one  could  do  these  things  so  well  as  the 
Irish.  On  their  own  stage  their  light  shines  far  beyond 
their  own  land.  They  have  naturalness,  character,  a 
knack  of  reality.  As  long  as  this  theatre  remains  true 
to  the  principles  for  which  it  was  established,  it  cannot 
fail  by  stimulus  and  example  to  be  of  first  importance 
to  the  theatre  of  England. 


CHAPTER  X 

George  Bernard  Shaw 

No  man  in  the  modern  English  theatre  has  been  sub- 
jected to  so  much  confused  thinking  as  George  Bernard 
Shaw.  The  most  talked  about  man  of  his  time,  he  has 
been  most  misunderstood,  or  most  variously  understood. 
We  fear  that  the  subject  of  Shaw  has  been  made  un- 
necessarily difficult.  It  has  been  subjected  to  that 
faculty  of  "common  nonsense",  to  that  "invincible 
determination  to  tell  and  be  told  lies  about  every- 
thing" to  which  he  refers  when  he  writes  of  the  Anglo- 
Saxon  people. 

Whatever  Shaw  is,  he  is  not  primarily  a  dramatist. 
Before  he  came  to  the  writing  of  plays  he  had  expressed 
himself  as  lecturer,  writer  on  social  and  economic  topics, 
novelist,  and  critic.  A  playwright  in  the  sense  in  which 
that  term  is  used  for  Moliere  or  Shakespeare,  for  Sheri- 
dan or  Pinero,  he  has  never  become.  His  plays  have 
never  achieved  to  anything  like  popularity  or  even 
general  acceptance  in  the  theatre.  In  spite  of  his 
great  influence,  an  audience  does  not  as  yet  exist  that 
can  support  them  for  long  on  the  stage.  Furthermore, 
he  has  not  tried  to  write  plays  which  can  stand  on  their 

176 


GEORGE  BERNARD  SHAW         177 

own  feet  without  explanation  or  glossary.     His  plays  ^ 
are  both  more  and  less  than  plays.    They  are  less  in-'^-'^^*-^ 
that  they  require  prefaces,   expanded   business  and  tl  c/- 
characterization  to  complete  their  meaning.    They  are  ^j,.^^ 
more  in  that  after  the  purposes  of  representation  are 
satisfied,  the  author  goes  on  to  serve  other  purposes 
which  lie  in  the  field  of  exposition  and  argument. 

By  some  Shaw  has  been  given  credit  for  creating  the 
modern  English  theatre.  Far  from  building  the  modern 
English  theatre,  Shaw  would  not  exist  as  a  dramatist 
but  for  the  building  that  others  had  done  before  him, 
work  which  he  adopted  and  turned  to  his  own  purposes. 
Shaw  was  the  first  playwright  in  England  to  find  ready 
for  him  instrumentalities  for  the  unhampered  expres- 
sion of  his  point  of  view.  The  two  instrumentalities 
upon  which  Shaw  has  depended  are :  first,  the  publi- 
cation of  plays  in  book  form;  and  second,  the  free 
organization  of  the  theatre.  Without  these  he  would 
not  exist  as  playwright,  and  both  these  instruments 
were  supplied  by  others.  Shaw  seized  the  drama  as 
the  best  means  of  exploiting  his  own  vision  of  truth. 

Just  what  was  the  point  of  view,  the  test  of  truth  to 
which  Shaw  desired  to  give  currency  ?  He  has  made  it 
his  business  to  subject  everything  in  the  mental  world 
to  as  stable  and  undeluded  a  standard  of  personal 
judgment  as  the  British  Islands  have  known  since 
Swift.  Shaw  very  early  revealed  his  formula.  He  has 
played  with  it  and  misrepresented  it,  but  it  has  remained 
since  his  early  youth.  The  first  feature  by  which  it 
may  be  known  is  Shaw's  peculiar  quality  of  revolt. 
From  his  earliest  youth,  when  he  joined  successively  the 


178   THE  CONTEMPOKARY  DRAMA  OF  ENGLAND 

Zetetical  Society,  the  Land  Reform  Union,  the  Social 
Democratic  Federation,  and  the  Fabian  Society,  he 
has  been  an  apostle  of  revolt,  but  revolt  rationalized 
and  made  secure  by  numbers  and  by  common  sense. 
Here  lies  the  first  key  to  Shaw's  apparent  inconsistency. 
An  absolutist  in  mental  processes,  he  is  a  pragmatist 
in  action.  Arguing  against  the  institution  of  the  family, 
he  would  live  in  this  institution  as  long  as  it  survives. 
Believing  in  a  reconstruction  of  society,  he  neither 
believes  in  getting  it  too  soon  nor  in  such  changes  as 
would  shake  the  foundations  of  the  social  bond.  Al- 
ways stepping  apart,  he  is  never  willing  to  stand  alone. 
In  other  words,  his  mind  and  his  pen  were  to  be  free, 
but  his  body  and  his  person  had  to  live  in  the  world. 

This  characteristic  is  explained  by  the  next  quali- 
fication of  his  mind.  Shaw  is  a  thorough  participant. 
That  philosophy  of  the  citizenship  of  the  artist  for 
which  Ibsen  stood  finds  a  true  expression  in  his  life. 
He  has  been  from  the  start  interested  in  everything 
and  has  made  all  things  his  own  affair.  But  partici- 
pation did  not  mean  for  him  working  in  a  land  office, 
explaining  new  electrical  devices,  and  learning  the  tricks 
of  men.  His  participation  was  mental.  The  mental 
quality  of  his  participation  was  revealed  in  the  first 
letter  he  wrote  to  the  papers,  a  letter  censuring  the 
Moody  and  Sankey  "revival"  system  in  religion.  He 
has  felt  the  obligation  not  so  much  to  put  his  shoulder 
to  the  wheel,  his  hand  to  the  whip,  as  his  mind  to  the 
problem.  He  knew  that  mental  participation  is  the 
most  unusual  as  well  as  the  most  valuable  kind.  There 
are  many  men  who  will  follow  the  easy  morality  of 


GEORGE  BERNARD  SHAW         179 

fidelity  to  a  cause  to  one  man  who  will  study  the  sources 
of  the  morality  of  that  cause.  It  is  this  gift  of  mental 
participation,  and  not  altogether,  as  many  have  sup- 
posed, his  Irish  contrariness,  that  has  made  Shaw 
inject  a  new  standard  of  judgment  into  issues  that 
seemed  to  be  settled. 

But  Shaw  is  not  a  philosopher.  One  who  searches 
through  his  works  for  a  consistent  explanation  of  the 
principles  of  things  is  doomed  to  disappointment. 
Shaw  is  no  more  a  constructor  of  a  watertight  system  of 
truth  than  was  Ibsen,  but  for  a  different  reason.  Ibsen 
was  primarily  an  artist  and  therefore  interested,  not 
in  the  cause,  but  in  the  concrete.  Shaw  is  a  tester  of 
values,  and  therefore  more  interested  in  man's  experi- 
ments and  essays  toward  truth  than  in  any  abstract 
vision  of  truth.  That  quality  of  participation  which 
he  represents  disqualifies  him  for  philosophy.  The 
philosopher  is  not  a  mental  participant  in  the  world. 
He  is  a  man  who  uses  his  mind  to  deny  the  concrete  as- 
pects of  the  world.  Shaw  uses  his  mind  to  react  to  the 
concrete  aspects  of  the  world.  His  mental  participa- 
tion consists  in  an  honest  mental  evaluation  of  things 
around  about  him.  For  this  task  he  is  well  equipped 
by  keenness  and  common  sense  and  lack  of  gullibility. 
His  personal  equation  is  slight.  Because  he  is  so  honest 
and  so  well  instrumented  it  is  said  he  subjects  every- 
thing to  himself.  But  he  makes  no  codes,  spins  no 
definitions,  searches  out  no  first  causes. 

Though  he  has  no  philosophy  he  has  a  test  that  is 
so  absolute  as  to  amount  almost  to  a  philosophy.  It 
is  hard,  self-sufl5cing,  and  immediate  in  its  judgments. 


180  THE  CONTEMPORARY  DRAMA  OF  ENGLAND 

This  test  qualifies  all  he  does  in  criticism,  commentary, 
censure,  and  in  playwriting.  By  some  it  is  called  ra- 
tionalism, or  intellectualism.  These  terms  would  serve 
if  they  are  made  to  seem  sufficiently  inclusive.  Shaw's 
test,  which  he  insists  lies  at  the  heart  of  all  men  if  they 
only  keep  themselves  alert  to  listen  to  it,  is  the  test  of 
that  logic  of  events  which  is  working  its  way  through 
men  and  all  the  forces  of  the  world.  It  is  not  a  prin- 
ciple of  Will,  for  it  lies  outside  of  men  as  well  as  within 
them.  Here  and  there  he  calls  it  the  Life  Force. 
Scholastic  reason  too  often  runs  counter  to  the  Life 
Force.  Shaw  would  identify  human  reason  with  the 
workings  of  the  Life  Force.  He  is  a  believer  in  the 
human  reason,  a  disciple  of  Samuel  Butler  in  believing 
that  all  the  Life  Force  has  achieved  it  stores  away  within 
the  man,  to  speak  thereafter  in  the  quieter  voice  of  intui- 
tion. Intuition  with  him  is  as  cold  in  judging  accord- 
ing to  the  eternal  process  of  nature  as  reason  has  always 
been  in  judging  by  its  arbitrary  and  man-made  codes. 
And  though  he  is  no  scientist  or  vivisectionist,  he  has 
no  more  respect  for  the  softer  virtues  than  have  these. 
His  attitudes  are  as  rigorously  assumed,  are  as  little 
subject  to  sentiments  of  kindness  or  goodness  or  mercy 
as  are  those  of  the  stoics  or  materialists. 

Shaw  is  first,  last,  and  all  the  time  a  critic.  He 
searches  the  object  of  his  criticism  for  its  underlying 
ideas  and  subjects  these  to  the  test  of  his  logic  of  events. 
Most  of  his  criticism  is  of  two  classes :  First,  art  criti- 
cism, of  music,  literature,  painting,  drama;  second, 
criticism  of  society's  formulated  ideas  in  religion,  poli- 
tics, and  morality.    His  art  criticism  is  of  a  specific 


GEORGE  BERNARD  SHAW         181 

type.  It  is  revealed  in  all  of  his  attitudes  toward  art, 
in  his  plays  and  writings.  "  Artist  philosophers  are  the 
only  sort  of  persons  I  take  seriously",  he  says.  Art  is 
to  him  the  expression  in  resolute  self-control  of  the  proc- 
esses of  the  hidden  logic  of  life.  The  only  function  of 
art  is  the  interpretation,  the  systematizing  of  the  life 
forces.  All  that  gives  entertainment,  that  supplies 
pleasure,  the  beauty  that  is  its  own  justification,  he  cares 
nothing  for.  And  he  cares  nothing  for  the  patter  of  the 
studios.  When,  after  his  unsuccessful  efforts  as  a  novel- 
ist, he  turned  to  musical  and  dramatic  criticism  on  The 
Star,  The  World,  The  Scot's  Observer,  and  The  Saturday 
Review,  he  brought  to  it  the  same  faculties  of  mind 
he  had  shown  in  his  earlier  revolts  and  in  his  novels. 
It  was  a  mind  resolutely  set  on  its  own  tangential  view, 
a  fundamental  code  of  judgment,  a  distrust  of  all 
formulas  of  whatever  type,  even  his  own,  and  a  com- 
plete lack  of  all  sense  of  form  and  of  all  regard  for 
technical  considerations  as  such  in  art.  He  brought 
to  bear  upon  art  and  music  certainly  a  stimulating, 
even  a  renovating,  method,  but  it  was  a  method  which 
would  have  had  no  validity  in  criticism  up  to  his  time. 
And  he  criticizes  social  ideas  in  the  same  way.  He  tests 
men  as  if  they  were  art  and  art  as  if  it  were  man. 
Against  formulas  of  belief,  of  conduct,  or  control,  against 
rubber-stamp  judgments  imputing  virtue  or  vice  by 
codes  his  first  tendency  is  to  turn  aside.  He  always 
keeps  his  mind  free  of  entangling  alliances  of  faith  or 
enthusiasm. 

Shaw  sells  his  wares.    In  a  day  of  universal  educa- 
tion, universal  reading,  and  universal  franchise,  broad 


182   THE  CONTEMPORARY  DRAMA  OF  ENGLAND 

currency  in  ideas  and  standards  must  be  the  ideal.  If  a 
thing  is  good  enough  to  exist  it  is  good  enough  to  dis- 
tribute. If  it  is  not  good  enough  to  distribute  it  should 
not  be.  Shaw  knows  that  very  effective  systems  have 
been  invented  by  men  for  giving  currency  to  the  wares 
of  commerce.  He  finds  that  the  wares  themselves  are 
not  cheapened  by  the  mode  of  distributing  them.  In 
fact  it  is  only  the  honest  ware  that  can  be  distributed 
long.  He  asks  whether  honest  thinking  is  any  less 
worthy  of  distribution  than  honest  merchandise.  If  it 
is  not  it  too  will  only  gain  its  end  by  the  means  which  will 
give  it  broadest  currency.  It  is  important  to  under- 
stand in  Shaw  the  combination  of  honesty  and  original- 
ity in  wares  and  a  remarkable  faculty  for  their  distri- 
bution. In  this  way  he  expresses  his  policy :  "  Spare 
no  labor  to  find  out  the  right  thing  to  say ;  and  then 
say  it  with  the  most  exasperating  levity,  as  if  it  were  the 
first  thing  that  would  come  into  any  one's  head." 

Shaw  has  not  come  to  any  of  his  work  full  fledged. 
In  fact,  he  has  never  as  yet  attained  command  of  any 
technique.  He  has  been  so  prodigal  of  ideas  that  he 
has  found  it  difficult  to  give  them  body.  And  he  has 
not  stinted  work  in  the  attempt.  His  novels,  written 
between  1880  and  1883,  are  interesting  as  showing  the 
fund  of.  his  ideas  and  the  difficulty  he  found  in  their 
management.  They  attack  the  same  institutions  he 
was  later  to  attack  in  his  plays.  In  The  Irrational 
Knot,  Love  Among  the  Artists,  Cashel  Byron's  Profession, 
The  Unsocial  Socialist,  we  have  middle-class  bigotry, 
pallid  ascetic  artists,  women  pursuing  men,  rational 
breakings  of  moral  codes,  the  problems  of  wealth,  the 


GEORGE  BERNARD  SHAW         183 

crime  of  poverty,  ridicule  of  the  ideas  of  sport  and 
heroism,  just  as  we  have  them  in  the  plays.  But  the 
construction  quite  unfitted  the  novels  for  use.  No  one 
would  buy  wares  done  up  in  such  a  package.  He  seems 
always  to  have  been  lost  between  the  necessity  of  fur- 
thering his  mental  flights  and  the  necessity  of  providing 
a  medium  of  action  for  his  narrative.  The  result  was 
a  wild  hodgepodge,  undoubtedly  original,  and  no  less 
truly  without  design  or  sequence.  What  Shaw  needed 
to  find  was  a  naked  medium  for  the  expression  of  his 
ideas,  a  medium  of  art  that  would  permit  the  maximum 
of  theorizing  and  a  minimum  of  narrative.  This  he 
found  in  the  drama.  With  no  affection  for  drama  as 
such,  Shaw  seized  upon  it  as  the  means  of  putting  over 
his  ideas. 

That  Shaw  looked  upon  the  drama  as  an  instrument 
only  is  revealed  in  the  manner  in  which  he  handled  the 
form.  From  the  first  he  did  not  attempt  to  make  the  play 
self-sufficing.  He  combined  it  with  all  other  forms  of 
writing  necessary  to  express  his  ideas.  The  play  now 
comes  to  have  a  special  function.  It  is  not  concerned 
with  the  telling  of  a  story  or  the  creation  of  characters. 
It  is  the  precipitation  of  many  mental  reactions  on 
things  of  moment  at  the  time.  No  other  form  offers 
the  facilities  to  an  author  to  express  many  points  of 
view  without  tying  himself  to  any,  to  perform  labora- 
tory experiments  with  ideas  by  identifying  them  with 
characters  who  speak  for  themselves  and  not  the 
author.  In  this  way  the  play  protects  the  author  far 
more  than  does  the  novel.  But  when  he  has  thrown 
the  idea  to  his  characters  to  play  with,  Shaw  shows 


184   THE  CONTEMPOEARY  DRAMA  OP  ENGLAND 

where  his  real  mterest  lies  in  summing  up  his  own  con- 
tribution to  the  discussion  in  a  preface  sometimes  as 
long  as  the  play  itself. 

This  instrumental  treatment  of  drama  has  raised  a 
new  kind  of  play.  After  his  first  attempts  at  play- 
writing  Shaw  discards  all  traditions  of  dramatic  con- 
struction and  proceeds  to  write  plays  upon  new  de- 
signs. To  understand  his  play  we  have  to  consider  the 
materials  out  of  which  it  is  made.  Until  recent  times 
plays  have  belonged  to  three  orders  according  to  sub- 
stance. First,  there  was  the  idealistic  play,  which  was 
constructed  out  of  the  magnified  ideals  of  a  romantic 
code.  To  this  class  belong  both  the  so-called  classic 
plays  and  the  romantic  plays  of  Shakespeare.  This 
order  of  play  has  deteriorated  through  the  stereotyping 
of  its  ideals,  and  through  sentimentalizing.  Second, 
there  is  the  kind  of  play  that  takes  the  manners  of  a 
people  or  a  circle  as  indexes  of  its  character  and  civili- 
zation. To  this  class  belong  the  satires  of  manners  and 
social  conventions  of  Moliere  and  the  comedies  of  the 
English  Restoration.  Plays  of  this  type  are  never 
subject  to  the  abuse  under  which  romance  suffers,  being 
protected  by  the  acid  of  wit. 

The  third  type  of  play,  for  which  the  nineteenth 
century  was  largely  responsible,  was  the  realistic  play, 
which  attempted  to  place  upon  the  stage  the  present- 
ment of  reality  in  its  bodily  semblances,  neither  mag- 
nified nor  idealized.  We  cannot  yet  say  that  this 
attempt  has  been  successful.  At  its  best  it  is  not  alto- 
gether true  to  type,  as  its  real  substance  is  often  con- 
fused with  a  didactic  intent.    When  the  extraneous 


GEORGE  BERNARD  SHAW         185 

element  of  purpose  is  omitted,  the  problems  of  observa- 
tion and  choice  become  so  pressing  as  to  be  insoluble. 

Shaw  belongs  to  none  of  these  classes.  Yet  he  dis- 
plays characteristics  of  all  three.  He  applies  to  a  new 
substance  traits  derived  from  the  romantic  play,  from 
the  play  of  manners  and  from  the  realistic  play.  The 
material  of  his  plays  is  the  mental  substance  in  which 
modern  life  is  lived.  He  believes  that  the  most  im- 
portant thing  in  modern  life  is  the  ideas  out  of  which 
we  make  the  world  we  live  in,  that  in  truth  men  and 
women  have  moved  into  a  zone  of  thought.  In  this  zone 
they  meet,  they  govern  their  action  by  its  laws,  they 
incorporate  its  rigors  into  their  characters.  In  such  a 
zone  men  and  women  are  very  much  aware  of  the 
thought  value  of  all  phenomena,  and  the  best  of  them 
become  personified  mental  points  of  view.  Shaw  asks 
of  all  his  characters  how  they  react  mentally  to  the 
world  they  live  in.  Are  they  merely  parrots,  do  they 
think  like  books,  are  their  thoughts  provided  for  them, 
are  they  myopic  with  convention,  do  they  stand  against 
the  wind,  have  they  normal  vision  ? 

We  may  identify  Shaw's  characters  by  the  fact  that 
they  are  all  talking  characters.  Gone  are  all  the  inhi- 
bitions, the  inversions  that  conduce  to  silence.  There 
never  has  been  such  a  gallery  of  freely  expressive  indi- 
viduals. Only  such  a  poet  as  Marchbanks  speaks  in 
innuendos.  All  the  rest  are  volleys  of  speech.  This 
explains  and  justifies  his  long  speeches.  They  are  not 
long  with  bombast.  They  are  long  because  the  speaker 
has  something  to  say.  Many  of  Shaw's  characters  seem 
but  lately  to  have  discovered  the  faculty  of  speech. 


186  THE  CONTEMPORARY  DRAMA  OF  ENGLAND 

So  they  talk  with  zest.  These  people  are  all  talking 
about  their  own  business  —  which  is  everybody's  busi- 
ness. They  are  self-elected  representatives  in  the 
congress  of  opinion  which  is  modern  democracy.  Other 
plays  deal  with  ideas  in  solution.  Shaw's  deal  with 
them  in  contest.  The  ideas,  even  the  talk,  become 
dramatic.  Where  there  had  been  the  struggle  of  wills 
there  is  the  struggle  of  ideas  and  the  struggle  of  speech. 

Shaw  has  called  himself  a  dramatic  realist  and  has 
repudiated  the  well-made  play  and  the  tricks  of  romanti- 
cism. But  there  are  factors  of  the  romantic  in  the  free 
imagination  that  he  uses  in  the  structure  of  the  play. 
In  planning  the  play  there  is  no  dependence  upon  imi- 
tation of  social  forms.  He  is  fanciful,  even  fantastic, 
in  arranging  the  plots  that  will  release  his  ideas.  From 
the  play  of  manners  he  takes  the  grace  of  wit,  the  de- 
pendence upon  the  surface  as  an  index  of  the  soul. 
And  from  the  realistic  play  he  takes  men  and  women 
in  their  natural  magnitudes  and  environments,  con- 
structing out  of  commonplace  individuals  a  structure 
of  social  suggestiveness.  All  of  this  is  delivered  in  a 
thoroughly  individual  way,  with  no  care  for  form  and 
no  limitations  derived  either  from  the  necessity  of  pro- 
duction or  the  principles  of  tact  and  balance.  Shaw's 
carelessness  in  construction  is  a  thing  of  principle. 
Having  no  respect  for  art  canons  as  such,  he  pays  no 
attention  to  them.  He  has  been  called  an  Ibsenian. 
No  evidence  of  this  is  shown  in  any  of  his  plays,  except 
that  they  deal  with  a  society  that  has  been  fed  on 
Ibsenic  and  pseudo-Ibsenic  ideas. 

Shaw  has  created  very  few  characters.    None  of  his 


GEORGE  BERNARD  SHAW         187 

characters  live  outside  the  idea  symbolized.  Shaw  is  quite 
willing  to  make  a  character  talk  outside  his  own  nature, 
and  to  introduce  characters  who  sound  no  necessary 
note  in  the  orchestra.  The  truth  is  that  Shaw  is  not  inter- 
ested in  characters  except  as  vehicles  of  ideas.  The  play 
itself  is  a  fabric  not  of  character  but  of  the  conceptions 
that  generate  character.  And  so  the  dramatic  with 
Shaw  comes  not  from  a  clash  of  characters  but  from  a 
clash  of  ideas.  This  does  not  mean  that  he  ignores 
men  and  women  or  fails  to  realize  them.  He  realizes 
them  only  in  their  ideas.  If  ideas  run  riot  it  is  because 
the  character  speaking  is  skilled  in  intellectual  analysis. 
Shaw  measures  a  man  partly  by  his  articulateness.  So 
he  never  loses  his  character  in  his  discourse.  His 
clashes  are  mental  and  at  the  same  time  dramatic  and 
unforced.  When  emotion  appears  it  is  as  a  coloring  of 
thought,  as  a  shooting  through  of  the  idea  with  the 
pressure  of  life.  Let  no  one  think  that  by  reading  the 
speeches  of  the  most  eloquent  of  Shaw's  characters 
he  is  finding  out  Shaw.  That  character  may  be  the 
most  deluded  in  his  gallery.  Shaw  does  not  guide  his 
characters  in  their  thinking.  It  is  rather  through  the 
character  that  does  not  think  that  Shaw's  own  opinions 
are  revealed,  cloaked  in  a  hearty  scorn. 

One  hears  continually  of  Shaw's  wit  and  paradox. 
He  is  too  honest  a  man  to  satisfy  himself  with  any  such 
easy  scheme  as  denial  of  the  apparent.  His  wit  is 
partly  for  the  purpose  of  selling  his  wares.  It  is  partly 
a  preservative  of  his  thought.  Too  much  has  been 
made  of  his  whimsies,  his  turnings  about,  his  surprises. 
Upon  those  who  see  only  folly  in  him  we  may  expect 


188      THE   CONTEMPORARY   DRAMA   OF  ENGLAND 

the  shafts  of  his  satire  to  fall.  Those  who  look  for  the 
jester  find  nothing  better  nor  worse.  But  he  is  unwill- 
ing to  permit  a  legend  of  himself  to  develop.  The  man 
who  turns  the  white  light  on  patriotism,  on  Csesar,  on 
Napoleon,  on  Christianity,  and  love,  could  hardly  per- 
mit the  accretion  of  folklore  about  himself  in  his  life- 
time. 

At  the  time  that  Shaw  was  facing  his  career  as  a 
dramatist  he  had  gone  so  far  in  his  career  that  A.  B. 
Walkley  could  call  him  in  The  Fortnightly  "one  of  the 
most  courageous,  most  lucid,  most  remorselessly  logi- 
cal thinkers  of  the  day,  and  the  invasion  of  the  theatre 
by  such  a  man  is  an  event  bound  to  leave  its  mark." 
Shaw  was  to  wait  long  for  the  realization  of  his  promise. 
He  had  written  dramas  steadily  for  ten  years,  and  had 
ten  plays  to  his  credit,  before  he  came  into  success  as  a 
produced  dramatist.  By  1903  he  had  written  Widow- 
ers' Houses,  The  Philanderer,  Mrs.  Warren's  Profession, 
Arms  and  the  Man,  Candida,  The  Man  of  Destiny,  You 
Never  Can  Tell,  The  DeviVs  Disciple,  Ccssar  and  Cleo- 
patra,  Captain  Brassbound's  Conversion.  Of  these  the 
first  had  been  played  without  success  by  the  Inde- 
pendent Theatre  (December  9,  1892) ;  the  second 
had  been  turned  down  by  Mr.  Grein;  the  third  had 
been  refused  a  license  by  the  censor.  Arms  and 
the  Man  had  been  played  for  about  four  months  at 
the  Avenue  Theatre,  beginning  April  21,  1894.  You 
Never  Can  Tell  had  been  rehearsed  by  Cyril  Maude  in 
1897  and  withdrawn  without  production.  The  same 
year  Janet  Achurch  (Mrs.  Charles  Charrington)  had 
taken  Candida  to  the  provinces.     The  Devil's  Disciple 


GEORGE  BERNARD  SHAW         189 

had  been  played  by  Richard  Mansfield  in  America.  In 
1900  Candida  had  been  played  for  six  matinees  in  London. 
In  all  this  period  there  had  been  only  one  London  suc- 
cess. In  1898,  having  failed  on  the  stage,  Shaw  deter- 
mined to  print  his  plays,  and  the  first  seven  in  the  above 
list  were  printed  under  the  title  Plays,  Pleasant  and 
Unpleasant.  The  remaining  three  followed  under  the 
title  of  Plays  for  Puritans.  The  success  of  the  plays  in 
printed  form  prepared  the  way  for  trial  on  the  stage. 
In  1904  Vedrenne  and  Barker  opened  the  Coiu-t  Theatre 
with  a  repertory  predominantly  of  Shaw.  And  with 
the  composition  of  Man  and  Superman  Shaw  enters  on 
the  high  stage  of  his  career. 

In  his  early  plays  Shaw  attempted  to  write  for  the 
stage  of  conventions.  Widowers'  Houses  had  been  be- 
gun in  collaboration  with  William  Archer  as  early 
as  1885.  It  was  not  taken  up  again  until  1892,  when 
it  was  completed  by  Shaw  alone  for  the  Independent 
Theatre.  Shaw's  first  three  plays  were  marred  by  an 
animus  of  censure  he  was  not  to  show  in  his  later  plays. 
Widowers'  Houses  was  directed  against  slum  landlord- 
ism ;  The  Philanderer  was  a  shaft  against  false  Ibsen- 
ites  and  those  who  feared  the  logic  of  Ibsenism,  aiming 
as  well  to  expose  "  the  grotesque  sexual  compacts  made 
between  men  and  women" ;  Mrs.  Warren's  Profession 
was  a  tract  on  false  standards  of  respect  between  parents 
and  children  and  a  false  system  of  public  morality  that 
drives  women  to  the  business  of  prostitution .  The  plays 
remind  one  of  Shaw's  novels  in  the  impression  they  give 
of  irksomeness  and  incomplete  realization  of  powers. 
They  are  subject  to  the. charge  of  arbitrarily  attacking 


190  THE  CONTEMPORAEY  DRAMA  OF  ENGLAND 

a  current  formula  in  order  to  set  up  another  formula 
no  less  false.  Only  a  few  characters  stand  out,  no- 
tably Grace  and  Charteris  from  The  Philanderer,  and 
Vivie  and  Crofts  from  Mrs.  Warren's  Profession.  The 
hardness  of  the  author's  treatment  is  relieved  by  few 
pleasant  subterfuges  of  wit. 

In  his  later  plays  Shaw  avoids  the  mistakes  of  his 
first  plays.  Wrong  thinking  is  examined,  but  the 
author  does  not  again  make  the  mistake  of  exchanging 
tweedledum  for  tweedledee.  He  now  begins  to  play 
with  ideas  rather  than  exhaustively  to  work  with  them. 
He  becomes  more  impudent.  As  he  does  so  his  hand 
becomes  more  free.  He  takes  an  attitude  of  free  public 
discussion,  censorious  but  not  destructive.  For  a  man 
who  answers  so  few  questions  as  does  Shaw,  whose 
function  is  provocative  rather  than  regulative,  this 
attitude  is  better  than  that  of  particularized  attack. 

If  you  are  going  to  throw  away  romance  you  may 
at  any  rate  use  anti-romance  to  good  effect.  By  so 
doing  you  secure  some  of  the  thrill  of  romance  and  the 
wit  of  satire.  In  many  of  his  plays,  notably  Arms 
and  the  Man,  Captain  Brassbound's  Conversion,  The 
Devil's  Disciple,  The  Shewing-up  of  Blanco  Posnet, 
Shaw  continues  to  use  a  plot  of  the  most  romantic 
and  melodramatic  character.  That  Arms  and  the  Man 
started  with  any  purpose  of  social  correction  cannot  be 
believed.  The  author  probably  undertook  it  with  the 
intention  of  writing  a  good  stage  play  and  was  diverted 
from  the  normal  by  his  own  particular  vision  of  truth. 
If  one  thinks  only  of  the  story  he  is  lost  in  admiration 
for  the  ingenuity  and  freshness  of  the  author's  plotting. 


GEORGE  BERNARD  SHAW         191 

It  is  a  true  comic  opera  plot,  joining  with  Captain  Brass- 
bound's  Conversion  in  a  display  of  a  fantastic  gift.  There 
is  a  Gilbertian  touch  in  Shaw's  treatment  of  warfare  as 
a  business-like  thing  and  in  the  victory  of  the  business- 
like Bluntschli,  owner  of  hotels  and  unromantic  warrior, 
over  the  idealist  Saranoff .  This  play  developed  some 
elements  of  popularity  and  ran  for  twelve  weeks  at  the 
Avenue  Theatre. 

Shaw  has  often  been  accused  of  taking  his  themes  by 
contraries  from  the  popular  interests  of  the  time.  He 
is  careful  to  explain  that  rather  than  seeing  by  oppo- 
sites  he  sees  more  normally  than  ordinary  men.  The 
action  of  Candida  Shaw  sets  in  the  midst  of  the  theories 
of  social  meliorism  that  were  common  in  the  nineties. 
The  church  of  the  Reverend  James  Mavor  Morell  is 
managed  on  the  principle  of  a  social  center.  Mr. 
Burgess,  the  impossible  father  of  Candida,  has  filled 
himself  with  the  terms  of  social  unrest.  Though  Shaw 
usually  saved  himself  from  the  charge  of  any  particular 
program  by  the  scattering  of  his  rays,  Candida  dis- 
plays a  certain  cogency  and  intensity  of  feeling.  The 
play  seems  to  be  woven  of  two  fabrics.  The  one  is  the 
social  fabric  of  reform,  represented  by  Morell' s  public 
life,  his  sermons,  his  worshipers  and  hangers-on.  The 
other  is  the  domestic  life  of  the  Morell  household,  a 
little  psychic  area  of  intimate  contacts  that  has  been 
more  illuminated  than  any  such  tract  in  modern  dra- 
matic literature.  All  the  characters  live  in  the  zones  of 
extreme  civilization.  Morell  lives  in  an  aura  of  elo- 
quence. Candida  is  a  woman  who  knows  the  thought 
value  of  her  sex.    Sex  is  not  only  a  disquieting  fact 


192   THE  CONTEMPORAKY  DRAMA  OF  ENGLAND 

to  her ;  it  is  a  phenomenon  which  she  holds  under  the 
scrutiny  of  her  intelHgence.  For  this  reason  she  has  no 
pruderies  and  affectations.  And  because  she  under- 
stands herself  she  understands  men  and  applies  to  them 
no  cruder  judgment  than  herself  demands.  And 
Marchbanks  is  one  of  Shaw's  only  characters  to  live 
on  the  level  of  the  higher  reason.  All  the  others  have 
normal  or  subnormal  insight.  He  has  supernormal  in- 
sight. When  these  three  characters  come  together  there 
is  pure  drama. 

As  drama  one  prefers  to  let  this  play  speak  for  itself. 
To  the  writer  it  seems  to  be  the  nearest  realization  to 
the  drama  of  developed  intelligences  that  our  time  has 
brought  forth.  It  is  the  kind  of  drama  Browning  would 
have  written  had  he  used  another  medium  than  verse. 
The  play  cannot  be  called  fantasy,  for  its  thought  struc- 
ture is  too  logical  and  articulate.  It  is  not  realism. 
One  thinks  of  it  in  connection  with  some  of  the  more 
confiding  plays  of  Ibsen  as  showing  how  far  Shaw's 
joyous  medium  goes  beyond  Ibsen's  sentimental 
medium.  The  play  has  fewer  Shavianisms  than  any 
of  his  others.  It  is  true  it  has  Prossy  and  Burgess, 
but  they  hardly  enter  the  play  as  one  remembers 
it.  In  this  play  we  see  appearing  the  questions  of  art 
and  sex  that  come  up  again  in  Man  and  Superman  and 
The  Doctor's  Dilemma.  In  Man  and  Superman  the  Life 
Force  is  victorious.    In  Candida  the  artist  is  victorious. 

Candida  is  an  answer  to  the  feminists,  but  she  is  an 
answer  to  the  "majerful  man"  as  well.  She  is  a  dan- 
gerous advocate  to  take  on  either  side  of  the  vexed 
questions  of  sex  relationship.    Chief  among  Shaw's 


GEORGE  BERNARD  SHAW         193 

characters  she  represents  his  ideal  of  reasonableness 
tempered  by  humor.  It  is  significant  that  the  best  of 
Shaw's  "  commonsense  "  characters  should  be  a  woman. 
Candida  was  not  produced  in  London  until  1904,  when  it 
made  a  part  of  the  Court  Theatre  repertory. 

Among  the  ideas  by  which  society  runs  itself  is  that 
of  the  hero.  Men  are  continually  building  themselves 
gods  to  worship.  Shaw  has  no  objection  to  such  a 
process  so  far  as  society  is  concerned,  but  he  thinks  we 
should  be  careful  to  distinguish  between  the  human 
original  and  the  figure  society  makes  of  him.  And  he 
thinks  too  that  we  should  continually  subject  our  heroes 
to  the  test  of  common  sense  and  the  human  standard. 
Some  men  he  believes  are  enjoying  a  place  in  history  dis- 
proportionate to  the  value  of  their  contributions.  This 
is  what  may  be  called  the  unearned  increment  of  fame. 
Some  men  squat  themselves  down  at  a  corner  in  history 
and  wait  for  events  to  build  a  city  there.  It  is  not  so 
much  Shaw's  idea  that  they  should  be  dispossessed  as 
that  they  be  seen  in  true  relation  to  the  contribution 
made  by  society.  The  figures  Shaw  attacks  are 
Napoleon,  Shakespeare,  Julius  Csesar  and  Cleopatra, 
and  Catherine  the  Great. 

Napoleon  is  treated  in  the  one-act  play.  The  Man 
of  Destiny,  written  for  Richard  Mansfield  but  refused 
by  him.  The  part  of  the  woman  was  later  played  by 
Ellen  Terry.  Napoleon  is  shown  as  a  little  boor  who 
set  himself  down  at  the  junction  of  the  nineteenth  cen- 
tury and  the  French  Revolution  and  permitted  destiny 
to  take  care  of  his  fame.  Not  only  their  own  power 
elevates  Julius  Csesar  and  Cleopatra.    It  is  the  power 


194   THE  CONTEMPORARY  DRAMA  OF  ENGLAND 

of  romance  in  the  imaginations  of  great  poets.  Of 
these  the  chief  weaver  of  illusions  of  majesty  has  been 
Shakespeare.  So  great  has  been  Shakespeare's  gift 
as  a  dreamer  of  lofty  dreams  that  he  himself  has  been 
raised  to  an  eminence  among  the  heroes.  Shaw  impu- 
dently and  unsuccessfully  attacks  this  illusion  in  The 
Dark  Lady  of  the  Sonnets,  written  some  years  later.  In 
CcBsar  and  Cleopatra  Shaw  treats  the  great  figures  of  an- 
tiquity in  a  more  kindly  manner.  Here  we  have  treated 
in  human  guise  beings  who  by  other  pens  had  been 
reared  into  glowing  abstractions.  The  sketchy  Caesar 
of  Shakespeare  is  given  some  warmth  and  humanity  in 
Shaw's  wise  and  witty  elderly  gentleman,  and  the  idea 
of  a  young  Cleopatra  with  unawakened  potentialities 
is  a  stroke  of  genius.  This  is  one  of  Shaw's  plays  that 
outdoes  romance  in  a  real  fervor  of  corrective  imagina- 
tion. It  would  seem  that  if  Candida  is  Shaws'  best 
beloved  heroine  Csesar  is  his  best  beloved  hero.  As 
played  by  Forbes-Robertson  he  is  a  masterpiece.  Shaw 
returns  to  historical  portraiture  in  The  Great  Catherine, 
a  farcical  bit  of  horseplay,  revolving  about  the  great 
Russian  Queen. 

You  Never  Can  Tell  is  the  play  in  which  Shaw  finally 
learned  to  handle  his  materials  with  careless  grace. 
He  had  been  trying  to  write  "  good  "  plays  for  some  time. 
Now  he  gives  up  the  effort  and  determines  to  write  Shaw 
plays.  Cyril  Maude  has  told  us  something  of  the 
circumstances  of  the  composition  of  You  Never  Can  Tell, 
Never  was  a  play  written  with  less  regard  for  the  laws 
of  composition.  The  present  critic  is  unable  to  look 
upon  thb  play  as  anything  else  than  a  huge  joke.    Who 


GEORGE  BERNARD  SHAW         195 

are  the  characters  you  would  not  expect  to  see  on  the 
stage?  A  dentist  and  a  waiter.  What  themes  seem 
closed  to  comedy  treatment?  The  bickerings  of  a 
miserable  married  couple ;  the  disrespect  of  children  for 
elders.  It  was  Shaw's  opinion  that  the  stage  carpenter 
had  been  tinkering  not  only  with  stage  plays,  but  that 
he  had  put  his  hand  to  life  until  life  itself  had  become  a 
matter  of  tricks  and  effects,  of  speeches  and  properties, 
of  "effective"  motives,  ideals  of  sacrifice,  climaxes,  and 
workmanlike  arrangements  of  events.  In  an  age  when 
the  world  was  beginning  to  make  itself  a  stage,  the  best 
the  stage  could  do  would  be  to  make  itself  as  tantaliz- 
ing as  possible,  to  shake  itself  free  from  the  reflections 
back  and  forth  between  a  regulated  life  and  a  regulated 
theatre,  even  if  it  had  to  break  the  mirrors.  There  is 
something  in  the  title  You  Never  Can  Tell  that  reminds 
one  of  the  easy  carelessness  of  Shakespeare's  Twelfth 
Night;  or,  What  You  Will.  In  almost  every  other  play 
seen  on  the  stage  you  always  could  tell.  And  that  was 
what  was  the  trouble  with  the  stage.  The  natural 
part  of  the  world  lives  by  fits  and  snatches.  Dentists' 
chairs  are  scenes  in  everyday  life.  Waiters  have  ad- 
vocates for  sons.  Children  do  not  respect  their  parents, 
and  often  parents  do  not  deserve  it.  Many  families 
are  better  apart  than  together,  especially  families  of 
"talkers  ",  and  waiters  are  men  who  must  have  a  phil- 
osophy of  some  kind,  otherwise  they  could  not  be  good 
waiters.  This  is  one  of  the  most  delightful  of  Shaw's 
plays. 

The  Devil's  Disciple  is  another  melodrama,  deftly 
securing  by  inversion  of  melodramatic  principles  the 


196   THE  CONTEMPORARY  DRAMA  OF  ENGLAND 

thrill  of  the  real  thing.  Here  is  all  the  material  of  the 
heroic  play.  A  brave  man  takes  the  place  of  another 
in  danger.  The  bad  man  shows  the  good  streak,  the 
beneficiary  refuses  to  accept  the  gift  and  goes  forth  for 
succor;  there  is  a  providential  escape  from  death  at 
the  last  moment,  —  all  these  expedients  and  more  are 
present,  but  they  are  treated  in  a  way  that  throws 
light  on  Shaw's  theories  of  literary  psychology  and  par- 
ticularly on  his  theories  of  goodness.  The  Demi's  Dis- 
ciple might  as  well  be  called  You  Never  Can  Tell,  as 
indeed  might  most  of  his  plays.  You  never  can  tell 
what  motives  may  govern  men  and  women  in  their  deeds. 
They  may  be  the  motives  that  the  world  of  books  has 
taught  us  are  the  acceptable  ones.  They  may  be  and 
probably  are  other  motives.  As  a  guide  to  these  mo- 
tives Shaw  is  much  more  disposed  to  trust  the  Devil 
than  any  of  the  more  approved  deities,  as  he  shows  in 
Blanco  Posnet  and  the  Scene  in  Hell  in  Man  and  Super- 
man  as  well  as  in  The  Devil's  Disciple. 

Captain  Brasshound's  Conversion  is  another  comic 
opera  play  with  Gilbertian  story  but  no  lyrics.  Its 
stage  settings  are  Moroccan.  Its  characters  are 
English,  aiiiiaiiiy  alliLL-r,  a  nephew  turned  brigand,  a 
London  Cockney  for  relief,  native  chiefs  and  pirates 
and  a  leading  woman  of  unbroken  sheen  of  exterior. 
By  no  standard  are  any  of  the  characters  or  actions 
true  save  by  the  standard  we  apply  to  The  Pirates  of 
Penzance.  In  his  early  plays  much  had  come  from 
Shaw's  desire  to  set  things  straight.  Now  much  comes 
from  his  desire  to  set  things  crooked.  It  is  impossible 
to  believe  that  there  is  anything  but  trickery  and  good 


GEORGE  BERNARD  SHAW         197 

spirits  in  this  play.  Through  the  action  appear  snatches 
of  imperiaUsm,  KipHngism,  manifest  destiny,  the  doc- 
trine of  the  dominant  race.  The  part  of  Lady  Cicely 
Wayneflete  provided  Ellen  Terry  one  of  her  most 
charming  roles. 

With  Captain  Brasshound's  Conversion  Shaw  comes 
to  the  end  of  his  first  phase.  In  the  plays  of  this 
period  he  seemed  always  to  have  an  eye  out  for  a  con- 
vention that  he  could  smash.  Much  as  he  violates 
many  of  the  requirements  of  the  manager  he  writes  the 
plays  as  if  for  production.  After  this  play  he  seems 
to  change  his  attitude  toward  the  play.  He  now 
treats  it  more  as  a  printed  document  and  makes  fewer 
efforts  to  adapt  himself  to  the  demands  of  the  stage. 
His  speeches  become  longer  and  the  plays  more  diffuse. 
The  play  now  becomes  a  discussion  play,  almost 
completely  giving  up  any  attempt  at  a  realistic  inter- 
pretation of  life.  It  is  fantastic,  often  rather  mad, 
in  its  arrangements.  Its  value  lies  in  the  uncovering 
of  mental  issues  rather  than  in  truth  to  external  ap- 
pearances. In  Shaw's  early  plays  there  had  been  some 
contact  with  flesh  and  blood  reality.  In  his  later  ones 
no  one  would  look  for  the  actions  of  the  world.  The 
actions  are  generalized  into  a  world  of  free  agents  in 
which  every  one  does  and  speaks  according  to  princi- 
ples that  will  most  clearly  evoke  a  hard  and  glittering 
sense  of  truth. 

These  characteristics  come  to  a  height  in  Man  and 
Superman.  The  play  is  too  long  for  performance  by 
the  length  of  a  very  talky  third  act.  That  the  play  is 
a  revolt  against  conventional  systems  of  romance  goes 


198  THE  CONTEMPORARY  DRAMA  OF  ENGLAND 

without  saying.  It  is  far  more  than  this,  and  our  sym- 
pathies for  it,  our  ability  to  accept  it,  depend  upon  our 
ability  to  translate  ourselves  into  a  world  almost  free 
from  the  control  of  traditions.  The  only  fault  with 
Ann  and  John  is  that  they  are  too  true  to  live.  They 
are  in  fact  the  truest  figures  in  recent  writing  in  that 
they  most  achieve  the  spirit  of  self-directing  intelli- 
gence. The  only  others  to  compare  with  them  are 
Philip  and  Jessica  in  Barker's  The  Madras  House.  To 
justify  such  epitomes  of  the  time  as  these  two  we  have 
to  imagine  a  super-logical  world  almost  as  regular  as 
that  of  farce.  Far  more  true  to  the  muddling,  deluded 
world  is  Ricky,  just  as  you  will  find  more  Hucksta- 
bles  and  E.  P.  States  than  Constantines  and  Philips. 
Violet  also  is  an  easier  figure  to  understand,  for  she  is 
simply  a  reaction  against  the  idea  of  the  wronged 
woman.  Ann  and  John  are  too  much  the  products  of 
the  author's  conception  to  be  reactions  against  anything. 
Let  no  one  think  this  is  not  a  drama  because  the 
author  presses  his  theme  beyond  human  nature.  In 
the  handling  of  the  chief  characters  there  is  more  than 
sportiveness.  Ann's  struggle  goes  down  to  the  deepest 
sources  of  drama.  It  would  be  hard  to  find  in  the 
theatre  an  equivalent  for  Ann's  struggle  to  fulfill  the 
law  of  her  being,  her  struggle  for  the  right  to  project  her 
life  at  the  expense  of  the  freedom  of  a  man  and  her  own 
journey  into  the  valley  of  the  shadow.  Heretofore  the 
dramatic  has  been  concerned  with  the  sense  of  death. 
This  is  a  drama  of  the  persistent  forces  of  life.  And 
John's  struggle  and  surrender  are  no  less  dramatic. 
He  too  must  accept  the  law.    Properly  Shaw  has 


GEORGE  BERNARD  SHAW         199 

couched  his  theme  in  flashing  words  and  ideas  that 
conceal  deep  springs,  but  one  reads  lightly  if  he  sees 
only  farce  in  Man  and  Superman,  or  the  fantastic  in  the 
uncovering  of  great  new  areas  of  struggle  in  old  human 
natiu-e. 

This  note  of  the  intense  passion  of  an  unfolding  world 
has  something  akin  to  tragedy  in  it.  The  sense  of  the 
catharsis  of  tragedy  that  one  gets  from  Maeterlinck's 
scene  of  the  unborn  in  The  Blue  Bird  is  found  not 
seldom  in  Shaw's  work.  Candida,  Man  and  Superman, 
The  Doctor's  Dilemma,  The  Shemng-up  of  Blanco  Posnet, 
Androcles  and  the  Lion,  Pygmalion  uncover  deep  places 
in  a  becoming  world.  The  laws  of  such  drama  have 
not  yet  been  worked  out.  There  is  something  of  trag- 
edy in  it,  the  tragedy  not  of  endings  and  surrenders  but 
of  processes,  of  the  unfulfilled,  the  tragedy  of  the  wait- 
ing factor  in  a  large  and  inscrutable  and  inevitable  plan. 
No  one  so  well  reveals  this  in  an  appropriate  medium 
as  does  Shaw.  Tchekhov  has  not  the  mood.  Andreyev 
has  not  the  medium.  Barker  thins  it  down  until  it 
loses  force.  But  these  are  the  only  ones  who  seize  on 
the  poignant  values  of  growth,  the  tragedy  of  the  com 
that  comes  before  the  full  ear. 

This  strain  is  in  many  of  Shaw's  plays,  but  not  de- 
veloped. It  is  the  dramatic  motive  under  a  chaos  of 
conversation  by  which  responsible  people  are  trying  to 
arrive  at  truth.  After  Man  and  Superman  Shaw 
seemed  disposed  to  take  more  particular  questions  and 
treat  them  particularly.  In  John  Bull's  Other  Island, 
written  for  the  Irish  theatre  but  too  large  a  structure 
for  this  little  stage,  we  have  another  discussion  play 


200   THE  CONTEMPORAKY  DRAMA  OF  ENGLAND 

treating  in  much  witty  dialogue  one  of  the  liveliest 
problems  in  the  policy  of  John  Bull.  Though  an  Irish- 
man, Shaw  has  never  been  one  to  take  a  sentimental 
attitude  toward  Ireland.  In  John  BulVs  Other  Island 
the  author  treats  Ireland  with  the  wit  of  an  Irishman 
and  from  the  general  vantage  ground  of  a  citizen  of 
the  British  Empire.  He  is  as  far  as  possible  from  the 
Ireland  that  is  represented  by  Cathleen  ni  Houlihan. 
But  he  never  takes  sides.  It  is  a  continual  battledore 
and  shuttlecock  between  Broadbent  and  Doyle,  the 
English  and  Irish  members  of  the  firm.  And  Shaw 
matches  the  often-expressed  truth  that  Ireland  is  good 
for  England,  with  the  idea  that  without  England  to 
keep  it  alive  the  much  vaunted  Irish  spirit  would 
dwindle  and  die. 

How  He  Lied  to  Her  Husband  is  a  little  bit  in  which 
Shaw  subjects  his  own  legend  to  the  scrutiny  he  had 
before  used  on  Napoleon  and  Csesar.  It  stands  in 
the  same  class  as  Fanny's  First  Play  as  a  "cooling 
card  ",  not  for  himself  but  for  his  idolators. 

In  Major  Barbara  (1905)  Shaw  discusses  more  ex- 
plicitly the  problems  of  force  and  warfare  that  he  had 
touched  in  Arms  and  the  Man.  Here  the  discussion  re- 
fers away  from  the  practice  of  arms  itself  to  the  social 
psychology  that  goes  into  the  training  of  the  fighting 
arm  of  a  nation.  In  a  day  when  democracy  is  teach- 
ing more  and  more  the  disparity  between  spiritual 
ideals  and  brute  facts,  what  shall  be  the  attitude  to- 
ward munitions  of  war  and  their  commercial  exploita- 
tion? More,  how  shall  we  conserve  stamina  in  men 
while   teaching   them   charity?    And   how   shall   we 


GEORGE  BERNARD  SHAW         201 

adapt  the  militant  ideal  of  the  other  cheek  as  expressed 
in  the  Salvation  Army  with  the  militant  ideal  of  the 
first  blow  ?  In  such  a  consideration  as  this  the  nature 
and  perpetuity  of  the  State  are  clearly  involved. 
Shaw  takes  these  questions  up  again  in  a  historic  set- 
ting in  Andrbcles  and  the  Lion. 

Getting  Married  (1908)  is  another  play  of  pure  dis- 
cussion. The  play  is  altogether  scattered  in  action 
and  in  speech.  The  author  was  able  to  find  no  cen- 
ters around  which  to  involve  separate  acts,  so  he  writes 
the  play  in  a  unit  without  entr'actes.  But  there  is 
something  impudent  in  the  suggestion  in  the  preface 
that  he  is  returning  to  the  Greek  ideal  in  a  play  that 
lives  no  life  in  the  mind  and  has  no  beauty  of  form. 
The  unreal  situations  are  invented  simply  in  order  to 
display  a  catalogue  of  the  faults  of  marriage.  With 
this  play  is  to  be  mentioned  Misalliance,  which  even 
the  audiences  at  the  Duke  of  York's  could  not 
admire. 

The  Shemng-^p  of  Blanco  Posnet  (1909)  is  called  "A 
Sermon  in  Crude  Melodrama."  The  idea  is  to  be  re- 
ferred to  the  same  source  as  The  Devil's  Disciple.  It 
is  one  of  Shaw's  most  effective  stage  plays,  and  the 
only  play  in  which  the  action  as  such  is  made  to 
serve  a  symbolic  purpose  after  the  style  of  Ibsen's  prose 
plays.  In  The  Doctor's  Dilemma  we  again  see  an 
attempt  to  heighten  the  value  of  action.  But  Shaw 
cannot  handle  a  plot  of  action,  so  the  episodes  of  this 
play  serve  only  to  confuse  a  theme  in  which  there 
are  several  substantial  motives.  Behind  the  badly 
handled  action  there  is  the  theme  of  the  "right  to  life" 


202  THE  CONTEMPORAEY  DRAMA  OF  ENGLAND 

treated  heroically.  The  stage  had  had  its  fill  of  plays 
defending  the  rights  of  the  individual.  But  if  there  is 
an  obligation  to  selection  in  birth  there  is  a  limitation 
to  the  duty  of  continuing  life.  With  this  theme  there 
is  combined  the  theme  of  artist  versus  mother-woman 
that  Shaw  had  treated  before.  The  play  is  almost 
invalidated  by  the  animus  shown  against  doctors, 
and  in  a  lesser  degree,  against  newspaper  men,  but  in 
spite  of  its  faults,  the  scene  of  the  death  of  the  artist 
is  one  of  an  astounding  force. 

In  Fanny's  First  Play  (1911)  the  author  steps  aside 
from  his  prepossessions  and  gives  us  a  play  about  the 
stage.  This  is  Shaw's  most  successful  play.  It  has  the 
Shaw  attitude  sufficiently  thinned  for  the  crowd,  it 
introduces  the  critics,  —  who  have  been  very  useful 
to  Shaw  in  his  career,  —  it  shows  a  play  in  process, 
and  it  provides  a  characteristic  little  Shaw  play  with 
a  full  quota  of  characters,  attitudes,  and  witticisms. 
With  all  its  popularity,  it  is  one  of  his  least  valuable 
plays.  Shaw  is  one  man  who  should  not  repeat 
himself. 

For  five  years  Shaw  had  seemed  to  be  in  the  dol- 
drums. Blanco  Posnet  and  The  Doctor's  Dilemma  had 
revealed  faults  we  had  no  reason  to  expect  from  the 
mature  Shaw.  Fanny's  First  Play  had  treated  second- 
hand materials,  and  Press  Cuttings  and  The  Dark  Lady 
of  the  Sonnets  were  but  trifles.  But  in  his  next  two 
plays  Shaw  found  himself  again.  Androcles  and  the 
Lion  (1912)  combines  the  corrective  method  of  the 
history  plays  with  the  theme  of  Major  Barbara.  Shaw 
strips  away  the  historic  illusions  from  both  the  early 


GEORGE  BERNARD  SHAW         203 

Christians  and  their  persecutors,  the  Romans.  Some 
call  this  play  the  Gospel  of  Peace.  It  seems  as  well 
to  represent  the  Gospel  of  War.  The  most  beautiful 
thing  in  the  play,  an  achievement  of  the  first  magni- 
tude, is  the  figure  of  the  Lion. 

Pygmalion  represents  not  only  the  statue  come  to 
life  through  power  of  the  artist's  fervor  of  creation. 
It  shows  the  next  step  in  human  responsibility  after 
the  doctrine  of  eugenics  has  been  accepted.  And 
this  responsibility  cannot  be  taken  lightly.  Pygmalion 
is  a  treatise  on  education.  The  scientist  is  to-day  cre- 
ating new  life.  There  is  still  to  be  asked  whether  he 
has  a  house  in  which  to  put  it.  While  tinkering  away 
on  cockneys,  on  the  illiterate,  giving  them  speech 
beyond  their  station,  providing  them  half-baked  ideas, 
have  we  been  making  room  for  them  in  the  world  for 
which  we  have  been  training  them?  This  searching 
question  stands  at  the  end  of  Shaw's  list  of  plays  for 
the  present. 

Shaw  the  thinker  must  ever  take  precedence  over 
Shaw  the  dramatist.  Yet  what  he  might  have  been 
as  dramatist  had  he  possessed  more  skill  in  handling 
action,  is  sufficiently  revealed  in  some  of  his  scenes  of 
pure  magic.  Several  moving  scenes  in  Ccesar  and 
Cleopatra,  the  death  scene  of  the  artist  in  The  Doctor's 
Dilemma,  the  delightful  turns  of  incident  in  The  Devil's 
Disciple,  Marchbanks's  victory  in  Candida,  the  whole 
conception  of  the  Lion  and  Androcles  and  the  strong 
man  in  Androcles  and  the  Lion,  the  regenerated  flower 
girl  turning  for  love  to  her  creators  in  Pygmalion, 
Tanner's  surrender  to  the  Life  Force  in  Man  and 


204   THE  CONTEMPORARY  DRAMA  OF  ENGLAND 

Superman,  Blanco  Posnet  talking  with  God  —  for  old- 
fashioned  dramatic  appeal  these  take  a  place  second 
to  nothing  in  English  prose  drama,  and  they  are  con- 
cealed in  so  much  that  is  new-fashioned  that  one  is 
likely  to  lose  one  magic  in  another. 


CHAPTER  XI 

Dramatists  of  the  Free  Theatre 

AsroE  from  the  work  of  two  or  three  dramatists  the 
annals  of  the  drama  of  the  first  fifteen  years  of  the 
twentieth  century  are  written  in  the  records  of  the  new 
theatre  organizations.  The  serious  work  that  had 
been  done  by  the  pioneers  and  rebuilders  had  come  to 
its  fruition.  Experimental  theatre  organizations  had 
been  provided.  Though  these  as  a  rule  lasted  only  a 
short  time,  they  drew  to  themselves  the  most  energetic 
workers,  the  playwrights  of  greatest  sincerity.  More 
than  this,  they  showed  the  development  of  a  clearly 
marked  division  among  theatre  audiences.  With 
the  coming  of  new  organizations  theatres  came  to 
be  classed  as  majority  and  minority  theatres.  The 
majority  theatre  continues  the  traditions  of  the  nine- 
teenth century  in  types  of  plays  and  in  business  organi- 
zation. It  constitutes  the  place  of  amusement  of  the 
great  numbers  of  English  playgoers.  But  most  of 
its  plays  are  overlooked  in  a  serious  consideration  of 
the  output  of  the  period.  Opposed  to  the  majority 
theatre  the  minority  theatre  busies  itself  in  construct- 
ing new  regulations  in  production  and  in  playwriting. 

205 


206  THE  CONTEMPORARY  DRAMA  OF  ENGLAND 

It  attaches  to  itself  a  small  audience  of  increasing 
critical  skill  and  fidelity  to  its  interests.  And  it  has 
taught  criticism  to  look  to  it  for  stimulating  new  ideas. 
This  theatre  may  well  be  called  the  Free  Theatre,  to 
distinguish  it  from  the  commercial  theatre  and  to  asso- 
ciate it  with  theatres  of  like  spirit  on  the  Continent. 

One  would  expect  an  institution  of  this  nature  to 
exercise  an  influence  over  the  kind  of  plays  produced. 
This  has  been  the  case  in  a  measure  far  out  of  pro- 
portion to  the  strength  of  the  theatre  in  numbers  or 
in  critical  acumen.  There  has  developed  a  clearly- 
marked  school  of  plays  for  the  free  theatre  in  England. 
The  first  demand  of  this  theatre  is  that  its  plays  be 
judged  as  art  as  distinguished  from  entertainment. 
All  the  plays  of  the  free  theatre  have  been  marked 
by  genuineness  of  substance  and  an  artistic  intent  in 
composition.  In  all  of  them  there  has  been  a  definite 
demand  for  truth  in  the  execution  of  the  work,  a  fidelity 
to  life  and  to  principles  of  form.  Whatever  the  type 
of  play,  whether  problem,  fantastic,  or  discussion 
play,  the  first  demand  has  been  for  the  satisfaction 
of  rigorous  standards.  This  insistence  upon  standards 
has  brought  into  the  service  of  the  free  English  theatre 
many  men  of  ideals  who  have  served  the  new  theatre 
with  vision  and  unselfish  devotion.  The  influence 
has  not  only  applied  to  the  composition  of  plays.  In 
these  theatres  have  been  created  companies  the  like 
of  which  has  not  been  seen  in  England  for  years. 
In  spite  of  defections  from-  the  ranks  there  has  been 
developed  an  ensemble  standard  of  production.  In 
staging  the  same  influence  has   been  felt.    Not  the 


DRAMATISTS  OP  THE  FREE  THEATRE    207 

least  important  result  of  this  system  has  been  the 
creation  of  a  new  art,  the  art  of  the  director  of  pro- 
duction. 

There  has  also  been  a  healthy  change  in  the  temper 
and  attitude  of  public  discussion  on  the  play.  Culti- 
vated people  are  beginning  to  be  cultivated  in  the 
theatre  —  by  no  means  heretofore  a  thing  to  be  as- 
sumed. Instead  of  concerning  itself  with  the  moral 
values  of  the  theatre,  and  the  vague  obligation  for 
the  people  to  "do  something",  discussion  has  come 
to  concern  the  critical  and  artistic  elements  of  a  pro- 
duction. This  is  because  worthy  productions  are 
becoming  more  common  and  taste  is  becoming  some- 
what more  expert.  Always  pertinent.  Max  Beer- 
bohm's  statement  that  the  people  always  support  a 
thing  for  moral  reasons,  and  never  for  aesthetic  reasons, 
is  tending  to  require  some  modification  as  a  larger 
critical  public  develops. 

Along  with  the  change  in  temper  that  has  risen  from 
the  minority  theatre  there  has  been  a  change  in  the 
type  of  man  who  writes  for  the  stage  and  in  the  atti- 
tude he  takes  toward  it.  The  history  of  the  theatre 
of  the  last  twenty  years  has  been  a  history  of  outsiders. 
Shaw  has  never  been  a  success  on  the  professional 
stage.  Even  Granville  Barker,  the  most  practical 
of  all  the  new  workers,  was  tutored  in  stage  societies. 
Instead  of  looking  for  the  plays  of  this  theatre  to  men 
who  have  educated  themselves  only  in  the  theatre, 
we  see  that  the  best  contributions  are  now  made  by 
men  who  have  educated  themselves  in  other  arts. 
Heretofore  the  novelist,  who  of  all  men  may  be  pre- 


208     THE   CONTEMPORARY  DRAMA   OF  ENGLAND 

sumed  to  have  sent  himself  to  school  to  the  world,  has 
been  discouraged  from  writing  for  the  stage  on  account 
of  the  supposed  technical  diflSculties  of  the  craft. 
He  has  now  discovered  that  these  difl&culties  are 
largely  imaginary,  that  there  is  hardly  a  gift  that 
one  learns  in  the  world  that  cannot  be  put  to  use  on 
the  stage.  So  there  has  been  a  great  increase  in  the 
number  of  novelists  who  write  for  the  stage.  Meredith 
often  spoke  of  the  desire  to  see  his  works  fitly  put 
forth  in  the  theatre,  but  had  no  time  to  make  the  at- 
tempt. But  after  him  Barrie,  Bennett,  Galsworthy 
become  ambidextrous. 

There  has  been  a  change  in  the  mood  of  the  drama- 
tists. Now  having  a  machine  of  production  upon 
which  they  can  depend,  their  work  is  no  longer  ham- 
pered with  the  doubts  and  the  uncertainties  that  so 
distracted  the  writer  of  the  Victorian  era.  This  sense 
of  security  has  done  much  to  give  poise  to  plays,  to 
render  compromise  unnecessary,  to  permit  free  flow 
of  imagination  and  technical  experiment.  It  has 
also  made  drama  more  joyous.  It  would  be  inter- 
esting to  inquire  how  much  of  the  bitterness  and 
misanthropy  of  the  early  realists  arose  from  discon- 
tent at  the  limitations  of  their  medium.  Certainly 
while  fighting  falsehood  in  the  world  Ibsen  was 
quite  as  vigorously  fighting  it  in  the  theatre.  From 
such  moods  the  recent  English  playwright  has  been 
relieved. 

One  would  expect  that  with  all  these  facilities  pro- 
vided ready  to  their  hands  there  would  have  been  no 
dearth  of  great  plays  for  the  theatre.    There  can  in- 


DRAMATISTS   OF  THE   FREE   THEATRE         209 

deed  be  no  complaint  of  the  skill,  the  command  of 
truth,  the  delicacy,  the  social  serviceableness  of  the      -^-^^ 
new  plays.    The  English  stage  has  seldom  within  a      "t._^ 
like  period  been  provided  with  so  considerable  a  body    '  . 

of  adequate  plays.     And  yet  as  one  surveys  the  list,   '■^'^--tJk 
the  conclusion  is  one  of  disappointment.    The  plays  of     v^,^-^^,^ 
the  free  theatre  possess  every  attribute  of  great  work       ^ 
save  the  attribute  of  great  imagination.     In  freeing      --v..^ 
themselves  of  the  controls  of  a  technique  of  artifice       j  a. 

the  dramatists  had  forged  a  chain  no  less  strong.        I 

The  rational  canons  of  objective  truth,  continually       f~  /) 
checked  by  reference  to  the  laws  of  psychology  and       —  ^ 
by  suspicion  of   the  validity  of   fancy  and  emotion, 
made  good  critical  principles  no  doubt,  but  they  did        ''"^"^ 
not  foster  living  works  of  imagination.     The  result 
was  to  make  exact  but  little  plays,  to  limit  the  moving 
source  of  the  play  to  the  scientifically  demonstrable. 
The  plays  of  the  minority  theatre  almost  all  follow  the 
codes  of  rationalism.    They  are  expert,  well  turned;' 
they  ring  true,  but  they  are   little.      Very   few   of 
them  have  any  vitality  except  that  of  thought.    Their 
significance  extends  no  further  than  the  action  of  the  ^  r<l_^ 
play  itself.     England  had  been  asking  for  bread,  and    "   ' 
while  they  did  not  give  her  a  stone,  they  did  give  her  ^ 

a  piece  of  well-made  concrete.  ''^--x^ 

In  these  plays  the  social  motive  is  retained  from  the  y^J^ 
preceding  age  in  the  same  manner  as  this  age  had    ~t~:^ 
clung  to  the  romantic  motive.    And,  like  the  romantic 
motive,  the  social  motive  had  lost  its  vitality  for  art. 
When  it  had  first  come  into  plays  it  appeared  with  all 
the  passion  of  rebellion.    It  was  fraught  witii  enthusi- 


210  THE  CONTEMPORAEY  DRAMA  OF  ENGLAND 

asms;  it  contained  enough  of  danger  to  give  it  in- 
tensity. But  now  the  motive  of  social  justice,  of  the 
war  of  the  classes,  has  lost  force  because  it  is  no  longer 
an  issue  for  art.  Though  not  realized  in  life  its  issues 
have  been  accepted  in  men's  thinking.  The  spirit  of 
revolt  has  now  been  subjected  to  reasonable  observa- 
tion, and  this  too  has  quieted  its  fever.  Though  these 
motives  are  out  of  date  the  dramatists  of  the  little 
theatres,  with  few  exceptions,  have  clung  to  the  old 
formulas,  and  dissected  to  a  needle  point  the  old  prob- 
lems. Galsworthy  and  St.  John  Hankin  and  Stanley 
Houghton  would  have  been  surprised  if  they  had 
been  told  that  they  were  raking  over  old  papers.  Yet 
in  their  art  they  were  neglecting  the  first  demand  of 
all  true  art,  that  it  search  out  unseen  values,  that  it 
experiment  in  the  revelation  of  hidden  truth.  Para- 
doxical as  it  may  seem,  the  theatre  that  was  itself 
built  upon  a  doctrine  of  experiment  encouraged  a 
group  of  safe  and  sane  "academic"  playwrights.  The 
theatre  that  was  rooted  in  individualism  flowered  in 
schools. 

In  an  effort  to  adapt  the  old  formula  to  new  uses 
there  comes  a  group  of  cynical  plays  dedicated  to  the 
rights  of  the  individual.  These  plays  were  based  upon 
the  same  formula  as  had  been  used  so  effectively  by 
Turgenev  in  Fathers  and  Sons,  the  story  of  the  struggle 
between  generations  for  the  ideals  of  each.  But  that 
struggle  differs  as  between  the  mid-nineteenth  cen- 
tury and  the  twentieth  century.  In  Turgenev  it 
was  a  struggle  between  the  old  order  and  the  new  order 
of  social  idealism.    The  old  order  was  being  destroyed 


DRAMATISTS  OF  THE  FREE  THEATRE    211 

under  the  force  of  a  moral  passion  for  the  service  of 
men,  the  sounding  of  the  evangel  of  humanity.  There 
was  tragedy,  but  it  was  sweetened  by  the  promise  that 
underlay  the  pain  of  change.  The  new  play  continues 
the  formula  of  the  old  struggle.  But  the  struggle  has 
lost  vitality  because  it  is  no  longer  directed  by  love  of 
humanity.  It  is  now  a  struggle  for  the  petty  rights 
of  an  individual.  It  deals  either  with  the  right  to 
individual  joy,  or  the  effort  to  adapt  the  moral  revolt 
of  a  period  of  idealism  to  the  cold  systems  of  new  busi- 
ness. Under  such  conditions  there  is  no  wonder  that 
technique  changed  and  shrunk.  There  was  no  longer 
fire  in  the  theme.  So  the  play  itself  became  struc- 
turally meticulous,  cold  and  intellectualistic.  Drama 
can  hardly  go  further  in  this  direction  than  The  Voysey 
Inheritance,  Milestones,  Rutherford  and  Son  go  in  the 
treatment  of  business  psychology,  and  than  Hindle 
Wakes,  The  Younger  Generation,  The  Eldest  Son  or 
The  Last  of  the  DeMullins  go  in  the  defense  of  the  right 
to  life. 

Part  of  this  appearance  of  a  studied  exactness  comes 
from  the  fact  that  the  writers  of  the  free  theatres  were 
keeping  themselves  aware  of  the  latest  developments 
on  the  Continent.  A  continental  education  was  pre- 
requisite to  success  in  this  theatre.  All  knew  Ibsen, 
but  his  influence  was  past.  Few  dared  to  write  in 
his  manner.  The  continental  types  that  were  most 
followed  belonged  to  that  new  genre  serieux  that  had 
come  in  with  the  end  of  the  century.  A  hundred 
years  after  Diderot,  the  genre  which  he  had  introduced 
had  come  to  form  in  the  successors  of  Augier.    Becque 


212   THE  CONTEMPORAHY  DRAMA  OF  ENGLAND 

had  introduced  to  the  stage  the  chaotic  substance  of 
society  itself,  a  little  embittered  with  his  view  of  life. 
His  followers  had  infused  method  into  the  serious 
study  of  the  phenomena  of  society.  Brieux  had  sup- 
plied the  laboratory  system  whereby  social  phenomena 
are  tried  out  on  the  stage.  His  interest  was  not  in 
characters  but  in  their  actions  under  his  tests.  His 
method  may  be  called  the  deductive  method.  And 
Hervieu,  among  others,  had  used  the  inductive  method. 
He  had  been  interested  first  in  the  law  and  had  studied 
men  and  women  as  agents  and  exemplars  of  the  law. 
It  was  to  the  works  of  such  men  as  these  that  the  Eng- 
lish dramatist  looked  for  the  laws  of  his  playwriting. 

Among  the  dramatists  of  the  free  theatre  John 
Galsworthy  (born  1867)  first  demands  attention.  Next 
to  Shaw  in  popularity,  Galsworthy  is  noteworthy  for 
the  command  he  has  attained  in  the  novel  and  the 
play.  Galsworthy  came  to  the  composition  of  plays 
with  a  social  doctrine  fully  developed  in  his  practice 
of  the  novel.  It  is  said  that  as  a  novelist  Galsworthy 
had  been  rather  strongly  influenced  by  Turgenev.  He 
showed  in  his  novels  a  strong  sense  of  social  obliga- 
tion couched  in  severely  poised  construction  and  re- 
strained language.  In  other  words,  he  was  a  thorough 
social  idealist  and  a  thorough  artist  as  well.  His 
work  revealed  the  melancholy  of  the  Slav,  and  the 
characteristic  vigor  of  the  Briton. 

Galsworthy  did  not  transfer  to  the  art  of  the  theatre 
the  temper  he  had  displayed  as  a  novelist.  When  he 
came  to  write  plays  he  added  to  the  characteristics 
of  a  Turgenev  the  technical  outlook  of  a  Brieux.     He 


DRAMATISTS  OF  THE  FREE  THEATRE    213 

undertook  playwriting  as  no  artistic  enterprise  but  as 
an  opportunity  in  propaganda.  Given  a  set  of  opin- 
ions to  express,  drama  provided  him  a  more  immediate 
and  emphatic  mode  of  expression  than  any  other  art. 
With  him  a  play  is  a  studious  documenting  of  a  social 
case  without  partisanship  and  without  heat.  The 
many  diflBculties  of  this  style  of  playwriting  Galsworthy 
overcame  at  a  bound.  He  surrendered  to  none  of  the  j  xf^^^ 
temptations  to  make  his  play  conventionally  dramatic,  j       ' 

Galsworthy  possesses  in  a  remarkable  degree  the  ^ 

ability  to  discover  the  dramatic  in  natural  and  un- 
forced situations.  In  order  to  secure  a  moving  climax 
he  ddes  not,  as  Pinero  sometimes  does,  develop  false 
themes,  or  with  Jones  make  himself  a  violent  partisan, 
or  like  Shaw  conceal  hard  thinking  under  verbal  dis- 
play. His  plays  have  the  surface  and  texture  of  care- 
fully molded  reality.  And  yet  as  a  playwright  he 
pays  the  price  for  this  constructive  eflBciency.  His 
plays  are  too  severely,  too  nakedly  architectured. 
He  seldom  gives  the  extra  line  that  presents  the 
contour  of  life.  In  Galsworthy  one  does  not  find 
that  unnecessary  grace  that  is  the  genius  of  the 
creator.  His  wisdom  never  overflows  in  prodigality. 
His  plays  are  all  necessarily  good,  —  never  unneces- 
sarily good.  His  dialogue  is  crisp  and  human  with 
all  the  cadences  of  speech.  As  a  dramatic  crafts- 
man he  stands  in  the  first  rank  beside  Pinero  in  every- 
thing but  Pinero's  occasional  gifts  of  the  magician. 
Of  his  characters  not  so  much  can  be  said.  They 
are  all  ready  to  walk  when  some  one  breathes  the 
breath  of  life  into  them.    But  they  do  not  walk.    His 


214   THE  CONTEMPORARY  DRAMA  OF  ENGLAND 

mechanical  and  mental  adequacy  is  the  measure  of 
Galsworthy's  first  position  in  the  second  rank  of  Eng- 
lish playwrights.  As  Galsworthy  proceeds  as  a  play- 
wright, the  traits  above  enumerated  have  led  to  a 
change  in  his  drama  from  a  thing  of  men  to  a  thing  of 
impersonal  forces. 

Galsworthy  avows  his  belief  in  the  moral  function 
of  the  play.  The  drama,  he  says,  must  have  a  spice 
of  meaning.  "Every  grouping  of  life  and  character 
has  its  inherent  moral ;  and  the  business  of  the  drama- 
tist is  so  to  pose  the  group  as  to  bring  the  moral  poign- 
antly to  the  light  of  day."  One  may  argue  that 
every  grouping  has  its  moral  without  agreeing  that 
characters  should  be  posed  for  their  moral.  Gals- 
worthy has  in  several  plays  posed  his  characters,  and 
this  is  the  real  charge  against  him.  He  may  have 
done  so  in  order  to  provide  laboratory  material,  as  in 
Strife,  or  in  order  to  make  a  particular  plea  as  in  Justice 
and  The  Mob.  All  of  these  represent  reality  manip- 
ulated for  the  sake  of  the  didactic  or  the  expository 
motive.  To  this  extent  they  represent  a  motive  alien 
to  truth. 

The  characteristics  of  this  author  are  revealed  at 
their  best  in  his  first  play.  The  Silver  Box  (1906).  In 
this  play  Galsworthy  had  so  well  mastered  his  art 
as  to  disguise  the  construction.  Nothing  Galsworthy 
has  done  in  the  theatre  has  equaled  this  play  for 
dexterity  in  story  telling  and  in  infusing  the  moral. 
Two  merits  are  notable.  One  is  the  dexterity  in  in- 
volving the  fortunes  of  the  two  classes.  The  other 
is  the  ability  to  give  an  impression  of  the  "surfaces" 


DRAMATISTS  OF  THE  FREE  THEATRE    215 

of  life.  His  grouping  of  events,  his  pregnant  action, 
his  silent  spaces,  his  shifts  of  interest  display  the  hand 
of  a  master. 

Like  The  Silver  Box,  Galsworthy's  next  play,  Joy, 
has  a  complex  and  realized  life.  It  is  quite  without 
social  intentions,  depending  upon  a  personal  theme  of 
unusual  richness  of  imagination.  Taking  a  theme 
that  other  dramatists  have  spoiled,  the  relation  of  a 
mother  and  daughter,  —  both  young,  —  to  each  other 
and  to  love,  Galsworthy  treats,  it  with  beauty  and 
without  moral  compromise. 

With  Strife  (1909)  Galsworthy  comes  to  the  fork 
of  the  roads.  The  social  idealism  we  have  spoken  of 
continues  in  him.  There  continues  too  the  demand 
for  poise,  for  suspended  judgment.  But  this  has 
become  now  an  intellectual  admonition  rather  than 
an  admonition  of  art.  He  is  very  careful  not  to  over- 
state a  case,  not  to  do  injustice  to  any  side.  The 
construction  becomes  diagrammatic,  governed  by  the 
necessities  of  his  review.  The  characters  are  posed 
with  care.  They  bring  out  the  moral.  But  they  do 
so  at  the  expense  of  the  human  graces.  One  feels 
that  never  was  this  group  called  together  for  any  other 
purpose  than  the  making  of  a  social  survey.  The 
play  is  not  a  depiction  of  any  one  strike.  It  is  not  a 
depiction  of  strikes  in  general.  It  is  a  Morality  on 
Strife. 

A  like  criticism  may  be  made  of  Jiistice  (1910). 
The  title  indicates  the  author's  purpose.  He  would 
attack  the  great  theme  of  justice  with  the  little  instru- 
ment of  a  realistic  play.    One  is  torn  between  admira- 


216   THE  CONTEMPORARY  DRAMA  OF  ENGLAND 

tion  of  the  superbly  achieved  "surfaces"  of  this  play, 
its  economy  of  suggestion,  and  perplexity  at  its  manipu- 
lated plot.  It  is  as  hard  for  the  author  to  bring  Falder 
to  death  as  it  was  for  Pinero  to  bring  Zoe  to  death 
in  MidrChannel.  But  while  Pinero  lays  no  blame, 
Galsworthy  points  the  accusing  finger.  Death  comes 
by  a  medley  of  circumstances  which  no  human  system 
could  stretch  itself  to  foresee.  All  that  was  necessary 
to  avoid  the  outcome  was  the  intrusion  of  one  man 
into  the  system.  It  is  hard  to  conceive  that  that  man 
would  not  have  intruded  himself.  Galsworthy  cannot 
justify  such  a  general  title  as  JiLstice  for  this  play. 
The  play  should  have  been  called  William  Falder. 

The  later  plays  of  Galsworthy  are  marked  by  an 
increased  baldness  of  planning,  abstractness  in  char- 
acterization, and  disparity  between  plot  and  theme. 
Aside  from  The  Pigeon,  a  little  fantasy  on  serious- 
mindedness  in  charity,  and  The  Little  Dream,  a  slight 
fairy  play,  his  plays  are  all  vehicles  of  messages  to  his 
time.  In  The  Eldest  Son  (1912),  The  Fugitive  (1913), 
The  Moh  (1914),  he  returns  to  his  method  of  bones 
without  flesh.  The  Eldest  Son  is  to  be  compared  with 
Houghton's  Hindle  Wakes.  The  Mob  is  an  ugly 
piece  of  irony,  as  misanthropic  as  anything  that  has 
been  written  in  a  long  time.  The  Fugitive  gives  us 
no  improvement  on  the  unhappy  women  of  Pinero 
and  Jones. 

John  Masefield  has  written  few  plays,  and  he  is  to 
be  noticed  here  for  only  one  of  these  and  for  the  theory 
of  tragedy  that  he  outlined  to  accompany  this  play. 
Masefield  is  first  a  poet  who  discovered  beauty  and 


DRAMATISTS  OF  THE  FREE  THEATRE    217 

faith  in  a  body  of  ugliness  and  doubt.  In  The  Ever- 
lasting Mercy  and  The  Widow  in  the  Bye  Street  he  taught 
us  that  under  the  materials  of  realism  there  may  lie  a 
vision  of  universal  truth.  He  would  not  have  existed 
without  the  realists.  Yet  he  adds  to  the  observation 
of  the  realist  the  capacity  for  emotion  of  the  idealist. 
In  The  Tragedy  of  Nan  (1908)  Masefield  has  harmonized 
the  point  of  view  of  old  tragedy  with  modern  circum- 
stance. This  is  one  play  of  the  new  theatre  that  is 
not  a  little  play.  Nan  is  a  majestic  figure.  Her 
tragedy  glorifies  her  sordid  fate. 

"Tragedy  at  its  best  is  a  vision  of  the  heart  of  life. 
The  heart  of  life  can  only  be  laid  bare  in  the  agony 
and  exaltation  of  dreadful  acts.  The  vision  of  agony, 
of  spiritual  contest,  pushed  beyond  the  limits  of  dying 
personality,  is  exalting  and  cleansing.  It  is  only  by 
such  vision  that  a  multitude  can  be  brought  to  the 
passionate  knowledge  of  things  exalting  and  eternal." 

In  these  words  Masefield  gives  the  modern  state- 
ment of  the  ancient  theory  of  tragedy.  Tragedy  is 
still  a  matter  not  of  its  story  or  its  struggles.  It  is 
not  made  tragedy  by  the  greatness  of  the  contest  or 
the  greatness  of  the  fall.  It  is  tragedy  only  when  the 
concrete  facts  of  an  unhappy  state  are  magnified  to 
a  universal  and  quieting  significance,  when  they  live 
beyond  themselves  in  a  purer  ether.  To  the  classic 
idea  of  catharsis  there  is  added  now  the  demand  that 
this  cleansing  conduce  to  more  knowledge  of  eternal 
things  on  the  part  of  the  race.  Darwin  has  been  added 
to  Aristotle.  Social  morality  has  been  added  to  indi- 
vidual morality.    Tragedy  must  search  the  vision  of 


218  THE  CONTEMPORARY  DRAMA  OF  ENGLAND 

the  heart  of  life  in  order  to  elevate  its  reality.  This 
The  Tragedy  of  Nan  does.  The  substance  of  the 
play  is  one  with  the  substance  of  life.  But  the  spirit 
of  the  play  elevates  the  substance  to  Tragedy. 

A  dignified  product  of  the  free  theatre,  a  man  who 
benefited  from  it  in  a  certain  solidity  and  finish  of 
his  plays,  yet  still  failed  of  absolute  achievement  was 
St.  John  Hankin  (1860-1909).  Hankin  combines  in  his 
art  two  strains.  He  takes  the  substance  of  the  realistic 
and  didactic  play  of  social  groups  and  treats  it  by  a 
method  derived  from  a  study  of  comedy  of  manners. 
He  desired  to  be  heard  as  a  comedian,  but  he  lacked 
the  nonchalance  of  true  comedy.  He  was  a  studious 
Oscar  Wilde.  Hankin  brought  to  the  theatre  a  full 
set  of  theories  as  to  playwriting  gained  by  the  study 
of  models  and  inquiry  into  the  temper  of  the  time.  He 
was  the  first  among  the  iiaturalistic  dramatists  to 
treat  social  facts  absolutely  without  a  drag.  Tradi- 
tion meant  to  him  only  the  means  whereby  he  could 
learn  to  tell  his  story.  And  tradition  of  convention 
meant  nothing  to  him  either  to  fight  or  to  accept. 
His  mental  machinery  seems  to  be  quite  free  from  a 
personal  coloring.  One  wonders  at  the  adequacy  of 
his  plays  without  admiring  them.  They  have  wit 
but  no  comedy  flavor.  They  teU  stories  of  ladies  and 
gentlemen  whom  we  respect  without  desiring  to  meet. 
Perhaps  no  writer  of  the  time  has  left  so  little  a  trace 
of  himself  in  his  plays. 

Hankin's  plays  cover  all  kinds  of  topics  within  the 
circle  of  polite  interest.  Goodness  and  badness,  the 
rights  of  women,  social  control,  the  problems  of  mar- 


DRAMATISTS  OF  THE  FREE  THEATRE    219 

riage  and  business  are  discreetly  interpreted.  They 
touch  the  deeper  places  not  at  the  center  of  the  plot 
but  at  some  point  or  points  in  the  periphery.  In  The 
Two  Mr,  Wetherhys,  The  Charity  that  Began  at  Home, 
The  La^t  of  the  DeMullins,  The  Cassilis  Engagement, 
we  see  the  scholastic  method  of  playwriting  reaching 
its  conclusion.  Hankin's  comedies  display  all  the 
controls  of  sanity  and  common  sense.  They  are  wary. 
They  hang  upon  none  of  the  illusions.  The  characters 
are  genteel,  of  good  breeding,  emancipated  or  so  near 
it  that  they  can  handle  the  vocabulary  of  the  enfran- 
chised. One  finds  himself  wishing  that  some  of  the 
new  illusions  of  sophistication  might  be  exchanged 
for  some  of  the  older  illusions.  There  are  two  things 
only  that  can  vitalize  a  work  of  art,  a  faith,  or  a  cause. 
The  first  works  constructively.  The  second  works 
destructively.  But  in  the  dry  zone  beyond  belief 
and  enthusiasm  art  cannot  dwell. 

What  has  been  said  for  Hankin  may  also  apply 
to  Stanley  Houghton  (1881-1914).  Extravagantly 
hailed  for  a  time,  the  perspective  of  months  is 
enough  to  place  him  as  little  more  than  a  competent 
workman.  Houghton  is  a  Hankin  without  comedy. 
Belonging  to  the  Midland  group  of  writers,  his  work 
lacks  the  refinements  of  manners.  Hindle  Wakes 
organizes  the  "new  morality",  or  unmorality,  into  a 
technical  code.  The  right  to  joy  is  no  longer  a  burn- 
ing issue.  It  is  a  presumption.  Far  more  real  than 
Galsworthy's  The  Eldest  Son,  it  reflects  in  the  temper 
of  the  play  itself  the  flattening  of  moral  intensity.  It 
is  well  done  in  that  it  is  laconic  and  commonplace. 


220   THE  CONTEMPORAEY  DRAMA  OF  ENGLAND 

But  it  is  a  perfect  example  of  the  "little  play."  It  is 
neither  ugly  nor  beautiful.  The  play  represents  the 
step  beyond  which  it  is  impossible  to  go  in  art,  in  that 
it  introduces  whim  and  pleasure  as  guides  in  the  great 
decisions  of  life.  Without  calling  upon  passion  or 
jealousy  or  the  demand  for  self-realization,  it  shows 
a  slangy  youngster  having  "her  little  fancy."  The 
story  of  such  a  play  could  be  told  in  ten  words  as  well 
as  in  three  acts. 

Set  apart  from  other  writers  of  the  free  theatre  by  ^ 
finished  artistry  and  a  resolute  morality  is  Granville 
Barker  (1877-  ).  As  moral  as  Galsworthy,  Barker 
excels  the  latter  in  a  searching  artistry,  in  making  excur- 
sions into  new  zones  of  the  spirit.  Indeed,  it  may  be 
said  that  Barker  is  the  only  man  in  England  who,  using 
the  methods  of  close  naturalism,  has  pressed  forward 
the  boundaries  of  art.  Barker  is  like  Shaw  in  liking 
discussion,  in  feeling  that  ideas  are  among  the  most 
important  things  in  the  world.  But  he  is  unlike  Shaw 
in  being  an  artist.  Aside  from  his  gift  of  a  quick  and 
understanding  mind,  Barker's  chief  virtue  lies  in  his 
skill  as  a  designer.  His  plots  are  all  beautifully  planned 
and  etched.  No  one  has  equaled  him  for  the  ability 
to  apply  the  principles  of  the  abstruse  arts  of  painting 
and  music  to  the  making  of  a  play  of  ideas.  The  skill 
he  shows  in  providing  new  mediums  of  expression  in 
the  production  of  plays  has  served  him  in  the  handling 
of  his  own  themes.  His  plays  are  models  of  form 
built  of  elements  articulated  like  a  symphony. 

All  this  artistry  Barker  applies  to  a  substance  not 
unlike  Shaw's,    He  takes  as  his  themes  the  topics 


DRAMATISTS  OP  THE  FREE  THEATRE    221 

of  intellectualism,  the  social,  political,  or  sex  interests 
of  men  and  women.  But  he  treats  the  mental  lives 
of  men  and  women  at  their  purest  and  best.  He 
selects  those  moments  which  are  beyond  speech, 
which  lie  in  the  region  of  the  veiled  suggestion,  the 
broken  meaning.  He  is  like  Shaw  in  that  his  char- 
acters live  in  their  minds  and  the  play  is  made  of 
mental  emanations.  He  is  unlike  Shaw  in  that  he 
makes  room  for  only  the  salient  thought,  the  revealing 
symbol.  The  result  of  these  things  is  a  certain  sil- 
houette quality  in  Barker's  characters,  a  lack  of  vitality 
in  his  treatment  of  themes.  His  themes  are  among 
the  most  vital  on  earth,  but  he  treats  them  in  a  vac- 
uum. He  makes  no  appeal  to  mood  as  detached 
from  thought,  as  does  Tchekhov.  His  plays  are  like 
reminiscences  of  passionate  things  after  emotion  has 
cooled,  or  they  are  aloof  and  cynical. 

Barker  started  his  career  at  twenty-two  with  one  of 
his  most  interesting  plays,  The  Marrying  of  Ann  Leete. 
Here  was  a  play  with  barely  a  sentence  of  narrative. 
Hardly  one  speech  made  definite  reply  to  the  last. 
All  was  as  disjointed  as  the  conversation  of  a  well- 
bred  group  overheard  from  a  balcony.  The  play  is 
a  nocturne,  opening  with  voices  joined  in  scattered 
speech  in  the  dark.  In  this  fashion  the  whole  play 
builds  itself  up  by  divination.  And  yet  there  is  in  it 
a  profound  grouping  of  characters.  Best  of  these  is 
Ann,  a  daughter  of  the  nineteenth  century,  who  deter- 
mines that  she  will  not  sell  herself  to  keep  alive  a  system 
that  is  moribund.  She  will  use  her  healthy  young  life 
in  a  conscious  devotion,  an  offering  to  the  cause  of  a 


222   THE  CONTEMPORARY  DRAMA  OF  ENGLAND 

healthy  world.  There  are  scenes  of  surpassing  poign- 
ancy in  the  work.  The  scene  in  which  the  knowledge 
of  sex  comes  to  Ann  as  a  thing  to  be  faced  and  not  to 
be  ashamed  of,  and  the  scene  in  which  having  made 
her  decision  to  marry  the  gardener  the  two  stand  in  the 
cottage  and  listen  for  the  call  of  their  children,  measure 
high  in  English  drama. 

Barker  has  always  held  to  the  moral  imperatives 
of  character,  as  these  are  applied  to  the  new  problems 
of  the  world.  In  two  plays  of  solid  workmanship 
he  studies  the  expressions  of  these  imperatives  as  they 
apply  to  modern  business  and  to  matters  of  sex.  The 
first.  The  Voysey  Inheritance  (1905),  is  a  study  of  the 
many-sided  face  of  honor.  As  a  study  of  the  family 
and  the  power  of  money  to  sap  the  conscience  the  play 
is  to  be  compared  with  Pinero's  The  Thunderbolt,  which 
it  precedes.  It  is  the  best  English  comedy  of  business, 
though  theatrically  not  the  equal  of  Pinero's  play. 
Waste  is  a  realistic  tragedy  lived  in  the  zones  of  the 
mind.  The  moral  of  the  play  is  not  that  sex  is  waste, 
but  that  we  have  not  yet  functioned  to  sex. 

The  Madras  Hotise  (1910)  is  the  climax  of  Barker's 
symphonic  method.  The  play  covers  in  good-natured 
speech  the  problem  he  touched  in  the  tragedy  of 
Waste.  In  his  effort  to  represent  the  "woman"  ques- 
tion fairly  Barker  gives  an  idealized  cross-section  of 
society  in  such  a  way  as  to  show  it  to  be  not  a  woman 
question  but  a  human  question.  He  shows  many 
groups  of  women  against  a  background  of  modem  busi- 
ness. The  first  is  the  group  of  the  Huxtable  sisters, 
a  cluster  of  grapes  hanging  on  the  family  vine,  waiting 


DRA.MATISTS   OP  THE   FREE   THEATRE         223 

to  be  plucked.  The  next  class  is  composed  of  those 
who  live  in  the  barracks  of  industry.  These  are 
shown  to  be  of  both  sexes.  The  third  broad  class  of 
women  is  represented  by  the  manikins  who  display 
costumes  in  the  establishment  of  The  Madras  House. 
This  group  politely  represents  that  class  of  women  who 
live  by  their  sex.  Other  women  are  shown,  —  Miss 
Yates  who  follows  her  impulses,  Mrs.  Brigstock  who 
marries  on  insufficient  income,  Mrs.  Constantine 
Madras,  a  "discarded"  and  complaining  woman, 
Miss  Chancellor,  a  demon  of  Virtue,  and  last  Jessica 
—  "the  most  wonderful  achievement  of  civilization, 
and  worth  the  cost  of  her  breeding,  worth  the  toil  and 
the  helotage  of  —  all  the  others."  Different  kinds 
of  men  are  shown  as  well,  from  Tommy,  the  "mean 
sensual  man",  through  E.  P.  State,  the  romanticist, 
and  Philip,  the  monk  of  the  intellect,  to  the  haughty 
Mohammedanism  of  Constantine.  Nothing  more  is 
needed  than  this  list  of  characters  to  show  the  theme 
of  the  play.  Plot  there  is  none.  It  was  the  author's 
purpose  to  show  a  mental  epitome  of  modern  society. 
The  result  is  a  fabric  of  remarkable  compression  and 
suggestiveness.  The  play  often  rises  to  comedy  and, 
at  the  end,  in  the  well-bred  but  sincere  speech  of  Philip 
and  Jessica,  achieves  beauty. 

In  addition  to  these  works  Barker  has  adapted 
Schnitzler's  Anatol  into  English  and  aided  Laurence 
Housman  in  the  composition  of  Prunella.  The  artistry 
of  intellectualism  will  hardly  go  beyond  Barker.  He 
has  sensitiveness,  restraint,  knowledge  of  the  soul  of 
the  time,   and  remarkable  mastery  of  design.    His 


224  THE  CONTEMPORARY  DRAMA  OP  ENGLAND 

plays  have  that  most  difficult  thing,  idea  vitaHzed  with 
sensation.    But  he  has  refined  this  type  to  steriHty. 

The  work  of  other  men  and  women  can  only  be 
touched.  Much  of  it  has  come  from  the  provinces, 
standing,  with  the  Irish  plays,  as  the  effective  dramati- 
zation of  little  themes  for  selected  audiences.  Eliza- 
beth Baker's  Chains  (Duke  of  York's,  1909)  is  a  very 
adroit  study  of  the  forces  that  make  up  middle-class 
life.  The  story  is  not  drawn  to  a  focus,  there  is  no  plot, 
but  the  pressure  of  events  on  narrow  lives  has  seldom 
been  better  presented. 

Githa  Sowerby's  Rutherford  and  Son  (Court  Theatre, 
1912)  has  a  little  of  the  Norwegian  note  of  gloom.  It 
deals  with  a  middle-class  business  family  in  a  story 
mvolving  business  honor  and  with  the  strong  note  of 
Strife.  Charles  McEvoy's  David  Ballard  (Manchester, 
1907)  is  a  realistic  melodrama  in  a  domestic  circle. 
To  a  like  class  belong  some  careful  studies  by  Gilbert 
Cannan  and  S.  M.  Fox. 

From  Wales  there  came  in  1913  Change  by  J.  O. 
Francis,  a  study  of  the  struggles  of  fathers  and  sons 
in  primitive  environment.  Of  a  comedy  order  is 
Moffat's  Bunty  Pulls  the  Strings  (1911)  that  came  from 
Scotland  to  the  Playhouse  and  was  then  transferred 
for  a  successful  run  to  the  Haymarket.  Harold  Chapin 
of  the  Manchester  Theatre  had  to  his  credit  several 
promising  light  plays  when  he  gave  up  his  life  fighting 
before  Loos.  All  these  writers  display  the  qualities 
suggested  at  the  opening  of  this  chapter.  By  1914  the 
writers  for  the  English  minority  theatres  had  reached 
the  pomt  at  which  they  were  waiting  for  the  next  stage. 


CHAPTER  XII 
The  Challenge  of  the  Future 

In  this  book  we  have  sketched  the  history  of  the  Eng- 
lish stage  from  the  accession  of  Queen  Victoria  to  the 
beginning  of  the  Great  War.  We  have  seen  how  the 
solving  of  the  problems  of  one  period  has  led  into 
the  problems  of  the  following  period.  No  movement 
has  come  to  full  consummation.  The  promised  golden 
age  has  each  time  receded  into  the  distance.  Each 
period  has  considered  itself  a  time  of  preparation  for 
greater  dignities  that  were  to  come.  And  each  period 
has  provided  its  own  quota  of  success  and  of  failure. 

These  facts  have  something  to  do  with  the  critical 
attitude  we  have  had  to  take  in  this  book.  No  time 
in  the  whole  period  of  our  study  has  failed  to  bring 
some  workers  who  demand  praise.  And  few  institu- 
tions even  of  the  later  periods  of  resolute  standards 
can  escape  altogether  from  censure.  We  have  seen 
that  the  minority  theatre  has  so  trained  itself  down  as 
almost  to  lack  stamina.  Common  sense  tells  us  that 
for  the  next  step  we  must  look  again  to  popular  art. 
And  so  the  period  ends  as  others  have  done  in  that 
doubt  which  is  Life. 

225 


226   THE  CONTEMPORARY  DRAMA  OF  ENGLAND 

As  we  have  surveyed  the  history  of  the  English 
theatre  for  fourscore  years  we  have  found  that  good 
work  does  not  come  in  clusters.  It  has  not  depended 
upon  groups.  Amid  much  work  that  has  been  merely 
acceptable  or  has  been  adversely  criticized  several 
works  have  received  what  may  seem  extravagant  praise. 
These  are  the  works  upon  which  the  mind  of  the  critic 
rests  with  satisfaction.  By  no  means  all  of  a  type, 
most  of  these  works  have  been  in  the  class  of  imag- 
ination and  comedy.  Little  has  been  said  for  the  "  well- 
made"  play,  the  realistic  play,  or  for  the  Englishman's 
attempts  to  put  high  meaning  into  tradesman's  tragedy. 
On  the  other  hand,  such  popular  forms  as  farce,  melo- 
drama, and  comic  opera  have  been  gladly  accepted. 
A  few  works  have  stood  out  once  and  for  all.  Brown- 
ing's Strafford  and  Colomhe's  Birthday;  Robertson's 
Caste;  the  lyric  comedies  of  Gilbert;  Pinero's  Tre- 
lawney  of  the  "  Wells",  The  Gay  Lord  Quex,  The  Thun- 
derbolt; two  acts  of  Jones's  The  Masqueraders ;  Shaw's 
Candida,  Man  and  Superman,  Androcles  and  the  Lion; 
all  of  Synge's  plays  except  Deirdre;  Yeats's  The  Land 
of  Heart's  Desire;  Barker's  The  Marrying  of  Ann  Leete; 
Masefield's  The  Tragedy  of  Nan;  Galsworthy's  The 
Silver  Box;  Barrie's  Peter  Pan  and  The  Admirable 
Crichton,  —  these  are  a  few  that  live  in  the  memory. 
Many  plays  have  received  very  serious  consideration, 
in  that  the  authors  have  made  worthy  efforts  to  con- 
tribute to  the  wisdom  of  the  age.  Strangely  enough 
many  of  these  sink  down  to  minor  positions.  It  is 
the  work  that  has  some  magic  in  it  that  is  remembered. 

In  spite  of  the  good  work  that  has  been  done  for  a 


THE  CHALLENGE  OP  THE  FUTURE      227 

generation  in  the  minority  playhouses,  the  English 
theatre  of  to-day  presents  a  face  of  doubt.  The  activ- 
ities of  the  drama  of  experiment  have  limited  them- 
selves to  a  narrow  road.  Outside  this  the  great  field 
of  popular  amusement  has  grown  broader.  Never 
had  the  theatre  expanded  as  during  these  years.  The 
number  of  music  halls,  cinematograph  halls,  variety 
halls  and  popular  theatres  has  risen  enormously.  And 
never  has  the  current  of  ordinary  English  drama  been 
less  distinguished.  If  we  except  the  movements  rep- 
resented by  the  printed  play,  the  drama  of  London 
and  the  provinces  seems  to  have  deteriorated  rather 
than  improved  in  quality  in  the  first  fifteen  years  of 
the  twentieth  century. 

The  plays  of  the  popular  theatres  have  been  greatly 
influenced  by  the  themes  of  the  plays  of  the  repertory 
theatres.  This  influence  has  not  been  always  favor- 
able. A  certain  daring  in  the  treatment  of  serious 
problems  in  the  book  plays  has  been  exploited  into  an 
appeal  to  illicit  interests.  The  methods  of  the  realistic 
and  purpose  play  have  been  copied  without  sincerity. 
Sex  problems,  problems  of  disease,  of  eugenics,  of 
political  and  social  reform  have  become  a  stock  in 
trade.  And  when  people  turn  from  these  plays  they 
turn  to  entertainment  of  the  lightest  nature,  to  naughty 
farces  and  musical  comedy  of  frocks  and  frills.  The 
French  play  is  almost  completely  extinguished,  but  the 
old-fashioned  melodrama  continues  as  a  relic  at  Drury 
Lane.  And  in  late  years  the  vulgar  "American" 
comedy  has  come  in  for  increasing  vogue. 

In  the  professional  theatre  of  the  first  class  there  is 


228     THE   CONTEMPORARY  DRAMA  OF  ENGLAND 

no  deterioration.  But  it  is  maintaining  its  position 
with  increasing  difficulty.  George  Alexander  and 
Frederick  Harrison  stand  with  Sir  H.  Beerbohm  Tree 
for  high  standards  and  good  plays.  They  have  called 
to  their  aid  a  group  of  enterprising  and  capable  crafts- 
men. Their  theatres  continue  the  traditions  of  the 
comedy  of  manners  of  the  nineties,  with  now  and  then 
a  play  from  Shakespeare,  an  old  English  comedy,  a 
new  situation  play,  or  more  rarely  a  genteel  problem 
play.  To  these  theatres  Pinero,  Jones,  Esmond, 
Carton,  Chambers  have  now  and  then  made  contribu- 
tion. To  these  writers  there  have  been  added  in  the 
new  century  a  few  who  continue  their  traditions. 
Alfred  Sutro  adds  to  the  methods  of  the  comedy  of 
manners  a  pointed  interest  in  social  issues.  Reared 
as  translator  in  the  school  of  symbolism,  he  goes  back 
as  writer  to  the  patterns  of  the  eighties.  He  is  much 
given  to  strong  and  silent  men,  to  exposes  of  the  rot- 
tenness of  the  world  of  fashion.  His  The  Walls  of 
Jericho,  a  hollow  thing,  was  warmly  received  on  its 
first  appearance  in  1904.  John  Glayde's  Honor  is  no 
better.  It  is  pompous,  a  fabric  of  priggish  attitudes. 
Sutro  is  also  the  author  of  a  series  of  artificial  comedies. 
Somerset  Maugham  is  better  than  Sutro  because  he 
does  not  try  to  be  so  lofty.  His  plays  are  bits  of  farce 
exquisitely  handled  to  bring  out  the  graces  and  fri- 
volities of  society.  Maugham  makes  no  pretense  to 
throw  light  on  life.  He  is  content  if  he  can  tell  a  story 
with  proper  taste.  The  best  that  can  be  said  of  him  is 
that  now  and  then  he  shows  some  of  the  playful  fancy 
of  Barrie.    Here  and  there  he  achieves  a  true  piece 


THE  CHALLENGE  OF  THE  FUTURE      229 

of  observation,  a  note  of  pathos,  a  discovery  in  hu- 
man equations.  As  he  proceeds  he  shows  a  develop- 
ment in  seriousness,  an  intention  to  be  something 
more  than  a  graceful  entertainer.  His  Ust  of  plays 
includes  A  Man  of  Honour  (1903),  Lady  Frederick 
(1907),  Jack  Straw,  Mrs.  Dot  (1908),  The  Land  of 
Promise  (1914). 

Higher  than  either  of  these  must  be  placed  Hubert 
Henry  Davies.  The  author  of  very  few  plays,  he  is 
the  creator  of  sohd  comedy.  He  is  that  most  unusual 
thing  in  the  theatre,  a  writer  of  scholarly  mind  who 
conceals  resolute  thinking  under  flexible  artistry. 
Davies  has  a  high  ideal  of  his  work.  He  ponders  long 
on  a  play  and  when  he  presents  it  one  may  be  sure  of 
a  theme  that  is  a  contribution  in  social  psychology  and 
a  treatment  that  bears  the  most  careful  scrutiny.  His 
men  and  women  are  flesh  and  blood,  they  speak  a  con- 
ceivable language.  His  first  play.  Cousin  Kate,  is  a 
quaint  romance  of  few  characters  and  deft  workman- 
ship ;  Lady  Gorringe's  Necklace  is  a  situation  comedy. 
His  best  comedy  is  The  Mollusc,  a  remarkable  study 
of  the  character  of  a  woman.  Outcast  broaches  a 
serious  problem  and  rather  patently  avoids  its  conse- 
quences. 

The  modern  English  theatre  both  in  its  popular  and 
experimental  branches  takes  its  stand  on  comedy. 
Comedy  represents  the  genius  of  the  English  people. 
The  French  have  their  genre  serieux  and  vaudeville, 
the  Germans  have  the  passion  for  reality  and  mysticism, 
but  the  English  have  intellectual  comedy.  This  is 
the  front  the  English  theatre  is  proud  to  put  to  the 


230   THE  CONTEMPORAKY  DRAMA  OF  ENGLAND 

world.  The  list  of  English  writers  of  comedy  in  the 
last  thirty  years  is  an  impressive  one.  Gilbert,  Pinero, 
Jones,  Wilde,  Shaw,  Esmond,  Chambers,  Carton, 
Hankin,  Barker,  Maugham,  Davies,  and  the  drama- 
tists of  Ireland  have  enriched  the  world  with  examples 
of  the  comic  spirit. 

We  have  seen  that  cold  intellectualism  brings  the 
dramatic  impulse  to  a  standstill.  The  scientific 
method  in  the  serious  play  became  bald  didacticism 
or  bad  psychology.  But  curbed  by  the  comic  spirit, 
the  theatre  has  given  us  some  of  the  corrective  agencies 
of  modern  thinking.  One  of  the  best  expressions  of 
the  scientific  method  as  applied  to  serious  themes  is 
the  method  of  fantasy,  into  which  form  realism  has 
been  breaking  up.  As  realism  could  not  turn  soft 
and  sweet  it  distorted  itself.  It  stretched  out  the 
predominant  lines,  it  set  askew  the  angles.  It  put 
laughter  instead  of  smiles  and  smiles  instead  of  tears. 
What  English  drama  must  do,  says  Filon,  is  to  create  a 
form  which  will  represent  the  dualism  of  British  char- 
acter. Pure  idealism  and  pure  realism  are  impossible. 
The  answer  is  given  in  the  fantastic,  in  which  form  some 
of  the  best  work  of  the  modern  English  theatre  has 
been  done.  The  nineties  were  fantastic.  Gilbert  and 
Pinero  discovered  their  best  in  fancy.  Meredith  and 
Butler  and  Shaw  grapple  with  a  dualism  that  Matthew 
Arnold  understood  but  could  not  express.  And  in 
Barrie  fantasy  achieves  its  height. 

The  man  who  transplanted  fantasy  to  its  home  in  the 
British  Isles,  who  made  it  speak  English  (slightly  tinged 
here  and  there  with  Scotch),  is  J.  M.  Barrie.    In  a  time 


THE  CHALLENGE  OF  THE  FUTURE      231 

in  which  revolt  itself  had  become  something  of  a  con- 
vention, Barrie  has  been  distinguished  by  standing 
apart  from  the  protestants.  His  career  itself  is  a 
perfect  expression  of  the  canny  sense  that  Meredith 
ascribes  to  comedy  and  that  goes  with  Scotch  char- 
acter. Barrie  is  no  reformer,  no  joiner  of  new  groups. 
He  came  to  the  theatre  only  after  he  had  made  a  suc- 
cess as  a  novelist.  But  unlike  other  men  of  the  time 
he  has  been  unwilling  to  confuse  the  issues  of  the 
theatre  and  the  printed  play.  Only  lately  has  he 
begun  to  issue  his  plays  in  printed  form,  and  these 
his  lesser  pieces,  or  plays  in  such  expensive  editions  as 
to  gain  little  ciurency.  As  a  dramatist  he  has  been 
strictly  a  writer  for  the  practical  theatre.  He  has 
refused  to  surrender  to  the  literary  convention.  His 
plays  are  written  for  production  only.  More  than 
any  dramatist  since  Boucicault,  his  plays  consist  of 
instructions  to  actors  and  producer,  of  effects  of  pure 
action.  He  follows  the  rule,  "no  speech  if  action  will 
do;  no  action  if  silence  will  do."  In  associations 
Barrie  has  connected  himself  with  the  older  profes- 
sional organization.  He  did  not  hesitate  to  put  him- 
self into  the  hands  of  the  chief  business  man  of  the 
EngUsh-speaking  theatre,  Charles  Frohman. 

Barrie  is  no  believer  in  the  theory  of  art  through 
hard  work.  By  the  super-serious  he  is  often  called 
facQe,  and  in  these  times  this  is  a  reproach.  But 
Barrie's  facility  is  but  the  quality  of  his  real  grace  as 
a  dramatist.  Barrie  has  more  intuition  into  character 
than  any  other  English  playwright.  There  is  a  spir- 
itual intimacy  in  his  work  that  no  one  else  can  show. 


232   THE  CONTEMPORARY  DRAMA  OF  ENGLAND 

This  is  the  source  of  his  charm  and  his  understanding 
of  charm.  It  is  the  source  also  of  what  some  call  his 
"trickiness",  his  "April-weather"  style,  his  fashion  of 
combined  sentiment  and  laughter.  Certainly  this  is 
the  source  of  his  joy  in  his  work.  No  artist  in  letters 
in  oup  tune  is  more  gleeful  in  labors  than  Barrie. 
He  has  managed  to  keep  the  joy  of  work  in  an  anxious 
time,  to  follow  fancy  while  other  men  were  following 
reason. 

Barrie  has  been  called  a  reactionary.  In  opinions 
such  he  undoubtedly  is.  He  has  steadfastly  refused 
to  indulge  in  -isms  and  petrified  ideas.  He  puts  forth 
no  formulated  disquisitions  on  human  problems.  His 
chief  interest  is  in  character,  but  in  his  understanding 
of  character  he  is  even  profound.  He  has  made  it  his 
business  to  open  up  new  nooks,  to  probe  the  whimsical 
pockets  of  the  natures  of  men  and  women.  He  refuses 
to  look  upon  men  and  women  as  mere  thought- 
machines.  His  themes  are  those  of  sentiment  and 
mood  and  intuition.  Sometimes  there  is  a  little  fem- 
inine "notion"  that  he  expounds.  And  he  creates  his 
impressions  by  the  most  economical  means.  If  he  is 
speaking  of  charm  he  gets  charm.  Because  of  his 
gifts  he  is  particularly  apt  in  dealing  with  women,  not 
as  subjects  of  vivisection,  or  as  exponents  of  the  human 
unrest,  but  as  the  sisters  of  gentleness.  And  he  knows 
how  to  deal  with  children.  And  when  one  comes  to 
think  of  it,  he  knows  how  to  deal  with  men  quite  as 
well.    Some  of  his  best  characters  are  "just  men." 

The  secret  of  Barrie,  if  one  can  get  at  it,  does  not 
lie  in  any  specialty  of  his  in  the  treatment  of  women  or 


THE  CHALLENGE  OF  THE  FUTURE      233 

children.  It  lies  in  his  ability  completely  to  assimilate 
the  materials  of  understanding  and  of  art.  He  is  the 
true  man  of  genius  in  the  simplicity  of  his  processes. 
On  this  Max  Beerbohm  has  said  the  best  thing.  "  The 
man  of  genius  is  that  rare  creature  in  whom  imagi- 
nation, not  ousted  by  logic,  in  full  growth,  abides  un- 
cramped,  in  unison  with  full-grown  logic."  And  he 
says  Barrie  is  "a  child  who  can  express  through  an 
artistic  medium  the  childishness  that  is  in  him." 

The  last  few  years  have  seen  several  uses  of  the  child 
medium  in  art.  The  child  medium  has  come  as  the 
best  vestibule  to  the  house  of  mystery  that  our  skep- 
tical times  will  admit.  The  child  literature  of  the 
last  few  years  is  something  far  more  than  literature  for 
children.  It  is  literature  for  grown-up  men.  We 
were  first  convinced  of  this  in  the  astonishing  wisdom 
of  Alice  in  Wonderland.  Kipling  used  children  in 
Puck  of  Pook's  Hill  and  Rewards  and  Fairies  in  a  very 
profound  research.  In  Maeterlinck's  The  Blue  Bird 
the  childish  imagination  is  used  only  as  a  lens  through 
which  older  ones  look.  And  Barrie  has  excelled  all 
of  them  in  Peter  Pan,  the  boy  who  wouldn't  grow  up. 
He  "has  stripped  off  from  himself  the  last  flimsy  rem- 
nants of  a  pretense  to  maturity."  Peter  Pan  is  the 
supreme  achievement  in  imagination  of  the  modem 
English  theatre. 

,  Barrie's  plays  are  based  on  wisps  of  sentiment,  of 
opinion,  and  of  character.  He  took  sides  on  Ibsen  as 
early  as  1891  in  an  unsuccessful  little  play  entitled 
Ibsen's  Ghost.  The  Professor's  Love  Story  (1895)  and 
The  Little  Minister  (1897)  are  fanciful  treatments  of 


234  THE  CONTEMPORAEY  DRAMA  OF  ENGLAND 

romance  in  which  Barrie's  understanding  of  quaint 
character  is  shown.  In  Quality  Street  (1903)  and 
Alice-Sit-by-the-Fire  (1905)  we  have  Barrie's  April- 
weather  manner,  a  strange  combination  of  sentiment 
and  anti-sentiment.  Quality  Street  is  a  story  of  a 
girl  without  girlhood.  Alice-Sit-by-the-Fire  is  the  story 
of  a  woman  who  has  lost  her  girlhood.  Neither  is 
true.  Both  are  effusions  of  literature,  the  spinning 
of  a  mood,  but  Barrie's  skill  has  saved  at  least  the 
first.  Little  Mary  is  one  of  Barrie's  most  delightful 
whimsies,  but  not  even  his  art  could  give  substance 
on  the  stage  to  the  idea  on  which  it  is  based.  Two  of 
Barrie's  plays.  The  Admirable  Crichton  (1903)  and 
What  Every  Woman  Knows  (1908)  are  based  on  broader 
foundations  than  his  usual  plays.  These  still  relate 
to  subtly  discovered  traits  in  human  nature,  but  they 
have  a  more  general  significance  than  his  studies  of 
individuals.  Max  Beerbohm  calls  The  Admirable 
Crichton  "the  best  thing  that  has  happened  in  my 
time  to  the  British  stage."  It  is  a  study  of  the  con- 
stitution of  society,  a  reference  of  it  back  to  first  prin- 
ciples, with  the  conclusion  that  "whatever  is,  is  right." 
The  manner  by  which  the  test  is  made  is  ingenious  and 
dramatic.  No  more  delightfully  representative  char- 
acters can  be  imagined  than  the  group  of  aristocrats 
and  servants  who  make  up  its  cast.  The  love  passages 
of  Lady  Mary  and  Crichton  have  magic  in  them. 
The  play  is  so  well  done  that  its  logic  cannot  be 
escaped.  What  Every  Woman  Knows  goes  back  to 
Barrie's  specialty,  the  handling  of  the  minds  of  women. 
A  beautiful  play  with  some  excellent  characters,  it  is 


THE  CHALLENGE  OF  THE  FUTURE      235 

more  bald  in  planning  than  any  other  of  the  author's 
works.  In  stating  the  case  for  Maggie,  Barrie  per- 
mits himself  a  plea  for  a  particular  woman  rather  than 
"every  woman."  It  is  only  in  a  little  partisanship 
for  women  as  against  the  selfishness  of  men  that  Barrie 
permits  his  art  to  slip.  He  does  this  again  in  the 
egregious  character  of  the  husband  in  The  Twelve 
Pound  Look.  The  Legend  of  Leonora  is  a  riot  of  glee- 
ful fancy,  perversely  placed  in  realistic  surroundings. 
Barrie  is  not  a  man  to  be  depended  upon  to  do  the 
expected  thing.  Old  Friends  is  as  intense  as  Ibsen, 
and  in  Pantaloon  he  has  given  us  a  rather  vaguely 
dramatized  version  of  a  Harlequin  theme. 

The  tendency  toward  fantasy  found  in  Barrie  has 
been  taken  up  by  other  writers.  It  was  supported  in 
England  by  a  neo-romantic  tendency  in  the  theatre 
of  Europe.  In  Rostand's  romance  there  had  been 
much  of  the  playful  element.  From  Italy,  the  home 
of  the  Harlequinade,  there  had  come  some  influence. 
When  fancy  began  to  stir  again  on  English  soil  some  of 
it  sought  out  the  materials  so  long  popular  in  the 
Christmas  pantomimes  and  began  to  introduce  the 
clowns  and  the  jesters  of  the  Harlequinade.  In 
Barrie's  Pantaloon  the  heart  of  the  old  man  is  un- 
covered by  the  coming  of  a  grandchild.  The  most 
charming  play  of  this  type  is  Laurence  Housman's 
Prunella,  produced  at  the  Court  Theatre.  There 
now  comes  a  tendency  to  elevate  the  fantastic  into  a 
code  of  playwriting  and  to  adapt  to  it  systems  of  pro- 
duction. The  reaction  from  real  things  is  expressed 
partly  in  return  to  a  playful  treatment  of  old  formulas. 


236   THE  CONTEMPORARY  DRAMA  OF  ENGLAND 

Old  stories  are  told  with  a  new  flavor,  written  either 
in  playful  verse  or  in  flexible  prose. 

Imagination  was  further  freed  by  the  coming  of 
Oriental  motives.  Japan  had  been  an  influence  in 
English  art  since  1880.  In  1903  a  Japanese  company 
played  in  London.  The  influence  of  the  Russian 
Ballet,  of  Max  Reinhardt's  productions  in  Berlin, 
brought  an  interest  in  the  more  garish  coloring  and 
more  elemental  themes  of  Persia  and  Arabia.  New 
systems  of  staging  and  production  based  upon  the  ideas 
of  Gordon  Craig,  of  Bakst,  of  Reinhardt,  began  to 
arrive.  There  developed  a  new  artist  of  the  stage, 
the  Decorator,  more  than  the  maker  of  sets  and  per- 
spectives, the  creator  of  inscenierung.  In  England 
GranviUe  Barker  was  the  patron  of  these  artists. 
Mr.  Albert  Rothenstein  and  Mr.  Norman  Wilkinson 
and,  above  all,  Gordon  Craig,  have  been  busy  creating 
new  effects.  About  1911  the  vogue  of  the  picturesque 
and  sensational  began  on  the  English  stage.  Maeter- 
linck's Bltie  Bird  and  Barrie's  Peter  Pan,  Reinhardt's 
The  Miracle  and  Sumurun,  and  the  Russian  Ballet  at 
Covent  Garden  awoke  England  to  new  ideas  of  stage 
beauty. 

Some  of  these  depended  upon  alien  motives.  But 
they  began  to  exert  an  immediate  influence  on  play- 
wrights. Galsworthy  writes  The  Pigeon  and  The 
Little  Dream;  Shaw  writes  Fanny's  First  Play  and 
Androcles  and  the  Lion,  Masefield  writes  The  Faithful 
on  a  Japanese  theme.  Other  dramatists  appear  who 
have  had  no  connection  with  the  older  movements  of 
realism.    Rudolf  Besier's  Don  (1909)  had  been  a  deli- 


THE  CHALLENGE  OP  THE  FUTUEE      237 

cate  study  of  Quixotism,  something  of  a  forerunner  for 
The  Pigeon  but  more  dainty  of  mood ;  his  Lady  Patricia 
(1911)  is  a  delightful  satire  on  preciosity.  Edward 
Knoblauch's  The  Cottage  in  the  Air  (1909)  a  flimsy  bit, 
and  his  next  play,  Kismet,  a  riot  of  sensation,  both 
belong  to  England  though  the  author  was  born  an 
American.  In  Lord  Dunsany's  The  Gods  of  the  Moun- 
tain and  other  plays  we  are  transplanted  to  a  no-man's 
land  of  imagination. 

The  man  who  had  been  responsible  for  this  change 
in  stage  theory,  or  at  least  its  prophet,  was  Gordon 
Craig.  After  fifteen  years  of  public  endeavor  Craig's 
work  is  still  "a  challenge  of  the  future."  Enough  of 
his  ideas  have  already  been  accepted  to  show  how  vital 
they  were,  how  instinct  with  creation  under  their 
destructiveness.  Craig's  first  stand  is  for  the  destruc- 
tion of  the  theatre.  "  To  save  the  theatre,  the  theatre 
must  be  destroyed",  he  quotes  from  Eleanora  Duse, 
He  begins  his  planning  for  the  theatre  of  the  future 
with  no  impeding  traditions.  He  dismisses  machinery, 
perspective  scenery,  and  actors  from  his  theatre. 
Believing  that  two  men  have  spoiled  the  theatre, 
the  realist  and  the  machinist,  Craig  seeks  to  return  the 
theatre  to  an  expression  of  the  immensities  of  the 
spiritual  world. 

Why  cannot  the  theatre  at  present  reflect  these  im- 
mensities? Aside  from  the  fact  that  it  is  mechanical 
and  imitative,  it  is  governed  by  emotion  and  chance. 
Alone  among  the  arts  its  effects  are  those  of  random 
inspiration.  Craig  would  introduce  into  the  theatre 
the  absolute  standards  of  the  other  arts.    He  would 


238  THE  CONTEMPORARY  DRAMA  OP  ENGLAND 

make  its  method  that  of  emotion  controlled  by  intellect. 
He  takes  as  a  text  Flaubert's  words :  "  The  artist  should 
be  in  his  work  like  God  in  creation,  invisible  and  all 
powerful;  he  should  be  felt  everywhere  and  seen 
nowhere.  Art  should  be  raised  above  personal  afiFec- 
tion  and  nervous  susceptibility.  It  is  time  to  give  it 
the  perfection  of  the  physical  sciences  by  means  of  a 
pitiless  method."  These  ideas  Craig  has  applied  to 
the  theatre.  In  a  search  for  a  sure  and  pitiless  method 
he  has  expelled  from  his  theory  of  the  theatre  the 
human  actor  and  all  color  of  personal  emotion. 

Evocation  of  the  imagination  is  Craig's  aim  in  art. 
But  he  wishes  to  make  the  principles  of  this  evocation 
certain  and  fixed.  He  believes  that  the  best  use  of 
the  formula  of  the  art  lies  not  in  itself  but  in  its  ability 
to  awaken  imagination.  The  formula  has  no  value  in 
itself.  It  secures  value  only  as  amended  in  the  imagi- 
nation of  the  beholder.  For  this  purpose  a  puppet 
will  do  as  well  as  a  human  actor,  nay  better,  because 
there  will  be  no  intruding  personality,  no  variation  of 
mood. 

That  fixed  and  unchanging  principle  which  Craig 
finds  in  the  puppet  he  seeks  also  in  the  production 
as  a  whole.  He  finds  this  in  the  application  to  the 
production  of  the  principles  of  design.  Design,  the 
factors  of  sight  and  mass,  supply  for  Craig  a  new 
medium  of  a  fixed  and  exact  quality.  There  are  few 
traditional  elements  in  this  medium  save  as  these  are 
derived  from  certain  suggestions  of  race  ceremonial, 
the  lines  of  architecture  and  of  ornament.  Most  of 
the  factors  of  this  medium  are  derived  from  the  new 


THE  CHALLENGE  OF  THE  FUTURE      239 

discoveries  in  the  values  of  light  and  color,  and  the 
recent  recognition  of  dramatic  suggestion  in  designs, 
in  color  arrangements,  in  draperies,  and  masses. 

Craig  goes  further  in  his  reaction  against  rationalism 
than  any  other  artist.  His  theories  are  not,  in  his 
opinion,  theories  for  the  few.  They  depend  upon  the 
instinctive  response  of  men  in  groups  to  appeals  of 
purely  sensuous  nature.  In  his  ideal  the  theatre  is  a 
place  of  the  many  in  which  the  reactions  of  men  are 
purified  by  response  to  a  fine  and  clean  medium. 
For  the  purpose  of  an  appeal  to  the  mass  imagination 
he  has  invented  the  "iiber-marionette",  a  large  figure 
to  serve  as  an  instrument  of  dramatic  imagination. 
Craig  has  gone  further  than  any  other  artist  of  the 
theatre  in  incorporating  into  drama  the  potentialities 
of  other  arts.  So  strongly  do  the  designer,  the  mu- 
sician, and  the  dancer  enter  into  his  scheme  that  drama 
seems  to  become  an  art  of  the  arts. 

Appropriately  enough,  Craig's  chief  significance  lies 
in  his  stimulation  of  thought  rather  than  in  his  deeds. 
His  revolutionary  ideas  are  subjecting  the  theatre  of 
commerce  to  a  rigorous  test,  and  there  are  many  signs 
that  his  influence  is  being  felt.  Most  of  the  fresh 
achievements  in  staging  of  Max  Reinhardt  and  Gran- 
ville Barker  are  to  be  referred  to  his  theories.  He 
began  his  career  as  a  producer  in  London  in  March, 
1902,  by  presenting  at  the  Great  Queen  Street  Theatre 
Handel's  Ads  and  Galatea,  and  Purcell's  Masque  of 
Love.  These  productions  are  significant  of  his  later 
ideas  through  the  fact  that  his  production  was  an 
"arrangement"  of  figures  and  shadows  on  a  one-color 


240   THE  CONTEMPORARY  DRAMA  OF  ENGLAND 

background  unbroken  by  flies.  Craig  has  designed 
productions  for  several  of  Shakespeare's  plays,  only  a 
few  of  which  he  has  been  able  to  render.  His  chief 
work  has  been  done  at  his  school  in  Florence,  Italy, 
and  through  the  columns  of  his  magazine  The  Mask. 

With  Craig  our  study  of  the  modern  English  theatre 
ends  on  a  note  of  speculation  not  unmixed  with  promise. 
Since  1914  the  theatre  of  England  has  been  standing 
still  awaiting  the  turn  of  events. 


BIBLIOGRAPHICAL  APPENDIX 


BIBLIOGRAPHICAL  APPENDED 

A  selected  list  of  plays  written  by  English  dramatists 
from  the  freeing  of  the  theatres  to  the  beginning  of  the 
Great  War. 

Dates  at  left  refer  to  first  production.  Dates  at  right 
refer  to  first  publication.  In  cases  where  the  play  appeared 
undated  in  a  series  of  stage  plays,  reference  is  made  to  the 
name  of  the  publisher  and  the  number  of  the  play  in  the 
series.    The  chief  series  were  as  follows : 

Cumberland,  J.    British  Theatre.    London,  1829  ff. 
Mmor  Theatre.      London,  1828/. 
Dicks,  J.     Standard  Plays.    London,  1883  ff. 
DuNCOMBE,  J.     Edition  of  the  British  Theatre.    London, 

1825/. 
French,  S.     Acting  Edition  of  Plays.    Continuation  of 

Lacy.    London  and  New  York.     To  date. 
Hilsenberg,  L.     The  Modem  English  Comic  Theatre. 

London,  1843/ 
Lacy,  T.  H.     Acting  Edition  of  Plays.     London,  1850  / 
Lewes,  G.  H.     Selections  from  the  Modern  British  Drama. 

London,  1868. 
Webster,  B.     The  National  Acting  Drama.    London, 

1837/ 

LIST  OF  PLAYS 

A  Beckett,  Gilbert  Abbott  (1811-1856)  and  Lemon, 
Mark  (1809-1870) 

1844.     Don  Cesar  de  Bazan.     Adapted  from  French 
of  Dumanoir  and  Dennery.    London,  1844. 
243 


244       THE   CONTEMPORABY  DRAMA  OP  ENGLAND 

Albert,  James  (1838-1889) 

1870.     Two  Roses.     London,  1870. 

1873.     Oriana. 

1877.     Pink     Dominoes.     From     Hennequin     and 
Delacour. 
Baker,  Elizabeth 

1909.  Chains.     London,  1911. 
Barker,  Harley  Granville  (1877-       ) 

1902.  The  Marrying  of  Ann  Leete. 
1905.     The  Voysey  Inheritance. 

1907.  Waste. 

In  Three  Plays.    London,  1909. 

1910.  The  Madras  House.     London,  1911. 
Barker,  H.  G.  and  Housman,  Laurence  (1867-        ) 

1904.    Prunella.    London,  1906. 
Barrie,  Sir  James  Matthew  (1860-       ) 
1892.    Walker,  London.     S.  French. 
1895.     The  Professor's  Love  Story. 
1897.    The  Little  Minister. 

1900.    The    Wedding    Guest.    Fortnightly    Review, 
1900. 

1903.  Quality  Street.     London,  1914. 

1903.  The  Admirable  Crichton.    London,  1914. 

1903.  Little  Mary. 

1904.  Peter  Pan. 

1905.  Alice-Sit-By-the-Fire. 
1905.  Pantaloon.     London,  1914. 

1908.  What  Every  Woman  Knows. 
1910.  Old  Friends.     London,  1910. 

1910.  The  Twelve  Pound  Look.     London,  1914. 

1912.  Rosalind.     London,  1914. 

1914.  The  Will.     London,  1914. 

1914.  The  Legend  of  Leonora. 


BIBLIOGRAPHICAL   APPENDIX  245 

1914.     "Der  Tag";  or,  The  Tragic  Man.    London, 

1914. 
1916.     A  Kiss  for  Cinderella. 
Bennett,  Arnold  (1867-       ) 

Cupid  and  Commonsense.     Lrondon,  1909. 
1909.     What  the  Public  Wants.     London,  1909. 

1911.  The  Honeymoon.     London,  1911. 
1913.     The  Great  Adventure.    London,  1913. 

Bennett,  A.  and  Knoblauch,  E.  (1874-        ) 

1912.  Milestones.    London,  1912. 
Bernard,  Willlh.m  Bayle  (1807-1875). 

1832.  Rip  Van  Winkle.     Lacy. 

1833.  The  Nervous  Man.    Lacy. 
1836.     The  Man  About  Town.    Lacy. 

Besier,  Rudolph  (1878-       ) 

1909.    Don.     London,  1910. 

1909.    Olive  Latimer's  Husband.     London,  1909. 

1911.     Lady  Patricia.     London,  1911. 
Boucicault,  Dion  L.  (1820?-1890) 

1841.     London  Assurance.    London,  1844. 

1844.    Old  Heads  and  Young  Hearts.     Webster  (13). 

1852.  The  Corsican  Brothers.  Founded  on  a  drama- 
tization of  Dumas's  Les  Freres  Corses,  by 
Grang^  and  Xavier  de  Montepin. 

1854.    Louis  XI. 

1860.  The  Colleen  Bawn ;  or,  The  Brides  of  Garry- 

owen.    Founded  on  Gerald  Griffin's  novel 
The  Collegian.    Lacy  (63). 

1861.  The  Octoroon.    Lacy  (65). 

1862.  Jessie  Brown;    or,  The  Relief  of  Lucknow. 

Lacy  (38). 

1864.  The  Streets  of  London. 

1865.  Arrah-na-Pogue.     London,  1865. 


246   THE  CONTEMPORARY  DRAMA  OF  ENGLAND 

1868.     After  Dark ;  or,  a  Tale  of  London  Life. 

1874.  Led  Astray. 

1875.  The  Shaughraun.     Lacy  (123). 
BoucicAULT,  Dion  L.  and  Reade,  Charles. 

1868.    Foul  Play.    London,  1868. 
Brighouse,  Harold. 

1911.    The  Odd  Man  Out.    London,  1912. 

1913.  Garside's  Career.     London,  1914. 

1914.  Hobson's  Choice.     New  York,  1916. 
Brougham,  John  (1810-1880). 

1863.    The  Duke's  Motto.    From  Paul  Feval's  Le 
Bossu. 
Browning,  Robert  (1812-1889) 

1837.     Strafford.     London,  1837. 

King  Victor  and  King  Charles.    London,  1842. 
The  Return  of  the  Druses.    London,  1843. 
1843.     A  Blot  in  the  'Scutcheon.     London,  1843. 
1853.    Colombe's  Birthday.    London,  1844. 
1884.     In  a  Balcony.     London,  1853. 
Buchanan,  Robert  (1841-1901) 

1880.  A  Nine  Days'  Queen. 

1881.  The  Shadow  of  the  Sword.    Dramatized  from 

his  own  novel  of  the  same  name. 

1883.  Storm  Beaten.  Dramatized  from  his  novel 
God  and  the  Man. 

1883.  Lady  Clare.  From  G.  Ohnet's  Le  Maitre  de 
Forges. 

1886.  Sophia.  Dramatization  of  Fielding's  Tom 
Jones. 

1888.  Joseph's  Sweetheart.  Dramatization  of  Field- 
ing's Joseph  Andrews. 

1890.  Clarissa  Harlowe.  Dramatization  of  Richard- 
son's History  of  Clarissa  Harlowe. 


BIBLIOGRAPHICAL  APPENDIX  247 

1890.    Miss   Tomboy.     Adaptation   of   Vanbrugh's 

The  Relapse. 
1890.    The    Sixth    Commandment.     From    Dosto- 

ievski's  Crime  and  Punishment. 

1894.  The  Charlatan. 

Buchanan,  Robert  W.  and  Jay,  Harriett. 

1884.     Alone  in  London. 
BucKSTONE,  John  Baldwin  (1802-1879). 

1828.     Luke  the  Laborer. 

1835.    The  Dream  at  Sea. 
Bulwer-Lytton,  Edward  George  Earle  Lytton  (1803- 

1873). 

1837.  The  Duchess  de  la  Valli^re.     London,  1837. 

1838.  The  Lady  of  Lyons.    London,  1838. 

1839.  Richelieu;     or,    The    Conspiracy.     London, 

1839. 

1840.  Money.    London,  1840. 

The  Dramatic  Works  of  Sir  Edward  Lytton- 
Bulwer.    London,  1841. 
Byron,  H.  J.  (1834-1884) 

1868.     Cyril's  Success.    Lacy  (89). 
1873.    La  Fille  de  Madame  Angot.     From  Siraudin 
and  Clairville. 

1875.  Our  Boys.    Lacy  (116). 

1876.  Wrinkles.    French  (115). 
1878.     A  Fool  and  his  Money. 

Cannan,  Gilbert  (1884-        ) 

1910.  Miles  Dixon.     London,  1914. 

1911.  James  and  John.     London,  1914. 
Carton,  Richard  Claude  (R.  D.  Critchett)  (1856- 

1890.    Sunlight  and  Shadow.    S.  French. 

1895.  The  Home  Secretary. 
1898.    Lord  and  Lady  Algy. 


248   THE  CONTEMPORARY  DRAMA  OF  ENGLAND 

1909.    Lorrimer  Sabiston,  Dramatist. 
Carton,  R.  C.  and  Raleigh,  C. 
1885.    The  Great  Pink  Pearl, 
—v         Chambers,  Charles  Haddon  (1860-        ) 
j  1888.     Captain  Swift.    London,  1902. 

HWv  1894.    John  a'  Dreams. 

^    .  1899.    The  Tyranny  of  Tears.     London,  1902. 

1909.  Sir  Anthony.    London,  1909. 
1911.    Passers-by.     London,  1913. 

1913.  Tante. 

'      ^      Chapin,  Harold  (1886-1916) 

1914.  Augustus  in  Search  of  a  Father.     1915, 

1915.  It's  the  Poor  that  Helps  the  Poor.     1915. 
_      1915.     The  Dumb  and  the  Blind.     1915. 
G^l^iNS,  WiLKiE  (1824-1889)  and  Dickens,  Charles 
^    (1812-1870). 

1867.    No  Thoroughfare. 
Collins,  W.  and  Fechter,  Charles  (1824-1879). 

1869.     Black  and  White. 
Davidson,  John  (1857-1909). 

Bruce.     London,  1886. 
Smith ;  a  Tragic  Farce.     London,  1888. 
Scaramouch  in  Naxos.     London,  1889. 
1905.    For  the  Crown.    From  Copp€e's  Pour  la  Covr 
ronne.    London,  1905. 
Self's  the  Man.    London,  1901. 
The  Knight  of  the  Maypole.    London,  1902. 
^  The  Theatrocrat.     London,  1909. 

y  ^       Davies,  Hubert  Henry  (1876-        ) 
1903.    Cousin  Kate.    Boston,  1910. 
1903.    Mrs.  Gorringe's  Necklace.    Boston,  1910. 
.    1907.    The  Mollusc.    London,  1914. 

1910.  A  Single  Man.    London,  1914. 


BIBLIOGRAPHICAL  APPENDIX  249 

1914.     Outcast. 

1914.    Lady  Epping's  Lawsuit.    London,  1914. 
Dean,  Basil. 

1910.    Effie. 
Down,  Oliphant. 

1914.     The  Maker  of  Dreams.     London,  1914. 
Drinkwatek,  John. 

1914.     Rebellion.     London,  1914. 
Du  Maurier,  Guy. 

1909.     An  Englishman's  Home.     London,  1909. 
Esmond,  Henry  V.  (1869-       ) 

1899.    Grierson's  Way. 

1901.    When  We  Were  Twenty-one.    S.  French. 
Pagan,  James  Bernard  (1874-       ) 

1904.    The  Prayer  of  the  Sword. 

1909.    The  Earth.    London,  1913. 
FiTZBALL  (Ball),  Edward  (1792-1873) 

1833.  Jonathan  Bradford;   or,  The  Murder  at  the 

Roadside  Inn.    Duncombe. 

1834.  Esmeralda;    or,  the    Deformed    of    Notre 

Dame,  from  Hugo's  Notre  Dame  de  Paris. 
Fox,  S.  M. 

1913.    The  Waters  of  Bitterness.    London,  1912. 

1913.    This  Generation.    London,  1913. 
Francis,  John  Oswald. 

1913.    Change.    London,  1914. 
Galsworthy,  John  (1867- 

1906.  The  Silver  Box. 

1907.  Joy. 

1909.  Strife. 

Plays :  The  Silver  Box ;  Joy ;  Strife.  London, 
1909. 

1910.  Justice.    London,  1910. 


250   THE  CONTEMPORAEY  DRAMA  OF  ENGLAND 

1912.    The  Little  Dream.     London,  1911. 
1912.    The  Eldest  Son.    London,  1912. 

1912.  The  Pigeon.    London,  1912. 

1913.  The  Fugitive.    London,  1913. 

1914.  The  Mob.    London,  1914. 
Gibson,  William  Wilfred. 

Daily  Bread.    London,  1912. 
Womankind.    London,  1912. 
Gilbert,  William  Schwenck  (1835-1911) 

1870.     The  Princess.    From  Tennyson's   The  Prin- 
cess.   Lacy  (87). 

1870.  The  Palace  of  Truth.    From  Mme.  de  Genlis's 

Le  Palais  de  la  Verite.    Lacy  (89). 

1871.  Pygmalion  and  Galatea.    Lacy  (103). 

1873.  The  Wicked  World.    London,  1873. 

1874.  Charity.    Lacy  (123). 

1874.  Sweethearts.     Lacy  (111). 

1875.  Tom  Cobb ;  or,  Fortune's  Toy.    Lacy  (117). 
1875.     Broken  Hearts.     Lacy  (118). 

1875.  Trial  by  Jury.    London,  1878. 

1876.  Dan'l  Druce. 

1877.  Engaged.    Lacy  (117). 

1877.  The  Sorcerer.    London,  1878. 

1878.  H.  M.  S.  Pinafore ;  or.  The  Lass  That  Loved 

a  Sailor.    London,  1878. 

1879.  The  Pirates  of  Penzance;    or,  The  Slave  of 

Duty.    London,  1887. 

1881.  Patience;    or,  Bunthorne's  Bride!    London, 

1881. 

1882.  lolanthe;   or,  The  Peer  and  the  Peri.    Lon- 

don, 1885. 
1884.    Princess  Ida;  or.  The  Castle  Adamant.    Lon- 
don, 1884. 


BIBLIOGRAPHICAL  APPENDIX  251 

1884.  Comedy  and  Tragedy. 

1885.  The  Mikado,  or,  The  Town  of  Titipu.     Lon- 

don, 1885. 

1887.  Ruddigore ;  or,  The  Witch's  Curse.    London, 

1887. 

1888.  The  Yeoman  of  the  Guard ;  or,  The  Merryman 

and  his  Maid.     London,  1888. 

1889.  The  Gondoliers;   or.  The  King  of  Barataria. 

London,  1889. 
1893.    Utopia  Limited ;  or,  The  Flowers  of  Progress. 
London,  1893. 
Original  Plays  of  W.  S.  Gilbert,  1st  and  2d 
Series,  London,  1876-1881 ;  3d  Series,  Lon- 
don, 1903;  4th  Series,  London,  1911. 
Original  Comic  Operas  of  W.  S.  Gilbert,  Lon- 
don, 1890. 
Grundt,  Sydney  (1848-1915) 

1877.    Mammon.    From  Feuillet's  Montjoye. 

1879.  The  Snowball.     S.  French  (131),  1893. 

1880.  In   Honour  Bound.     Suggested  by  Scribe's 

comedy  Une  Chaine.  S.  French  (123), 
1885. 

1882.  The    Novel    Reader.      From   Meilhac    and 

Hal^vy,  La  Petite  Marquise. 

1883.  The  Glass  of  Fashion.    French  (142),  1899. 
A  Pair  of  Spectacles.    From  Les  Petits  Oiseaux, 

Labiche  and  Delacour.  S.  French  (142), 
1899. 

1887.  The  Arabian  Nights.  Founded  on  the  Ger- 
man of  Von  Moser.     S.  French  (134). 

1889.  A  Fool's  Paradise.  S.  French  (142),  1899. 
(The  Mouse  Trap.) 

1893.    Sowing  the  Wind.    S.  French  (142). 


252   THE  CONTEMPORARY  DRAMA  OP  ENGLAND 

1894.    AnOldJew. 

1894.  A  Bunch  of  Violets.    From  FeuUlet's  MorU- 

joye. 

1895.  The  Greatest  of  These. 

1905.    Business  is  Business.     From  French  of  Octave 
Mirbeau. 
Hamilton,  Cosmo. 

1913.    The  Blindness  of  Virtue.    London,  1913. 
Hankin,  St.  John  (1860-1909). 

1903.    The  Two  Mr.  Wetherbys. 

1905.  The  Return  of  the  Prodigal. 

1906.  The  Charity  that  Began  at  Home. 

1907.  The  Cassilis  Engagement. 

1908.  The  Last  of  the  De  MuUins. 

Dramatic  Works  of  St.  John  Hankin,  with  In- 
troduction by  John  Drinkwater.    London, 
1912. 
Hastings,  Basil  Macdonald  (1881- 

1912.    The  New  Sin.    London,  1912. 
HoBBEs,  John  Oliver  (Pearl  Maria  Teresa  Craiqie) 
(1867-1906) 
1898.    The  Ambassador.    London,  1898. 
1900.    The  Wisdom  of  the  Wise.    London,  1900. 
Hope,  Anthony  (Hawkins)  (1863-       ) 

1898.    The  Adventure  of  Lady  Ursula.    New  York, 
1899. 
Horne,  Richard  Henry  (1803-1884) 

The  Death  of  Marlowe.    London,  1837. 
Houghton,  Stanley  (1881-1914) 

1910.    The  Younger  Generation.    London,  1910. 
1912.    Hindle  Wakes.    London,  1912. 

Works  of  Stanley  Houghton.    London,  1914. 
Jerome,  Jerome  Klapka  (1859-       ) 


BIBLIOGRAPHICAL  APPENDIX  253 

1900.    Miss  Hobbs.    S.  French. 

1907.  The  Passing  of  the  Third  Floor  Back.     Lon- 

don, 1907. 
1911.    The  Master  of  Mrs.  Chilvers. 
Jerrold,  Douglas  (1803-1857) 

1829.    Black-Eyed  Susan;  or,  "All  in  the  Downs." 

Duncombe  (4). 
1832.    The  Rent  Day.    London,  1832. 
Jones,  Henry  Arthur  (1851-       ) 

1882.    The  Silver  King.    New  York,  1907. 
1884.     Saints  and  Sinners.    London,  1891. 

1889.  The  Middleman.    New  York,  1907. 

1890.  Judah.     London,  1894. 

1891.  The  Dancing  Girl.     New  York,  1907. 
1891.    The  Crusaders.    London,  1893. 

1893.  The  Tempter.    London,  1898. 

1894.  The  Masqueraders.     London,  1894. 

1894.  The  Case  of  Rebellious  Susan.    London,  1894. 

1895.  The  Triimiph   of   the  Philistines.    London, 

1899. 

1896.  Michael  and  His  Lost  Angel.    London,  1896. 

1896.  The  Rogue's  Comedy.    London,  1898. 

1897.  The  Liars.    London,  1901. 

1898.  The  Manoeuvres  of  Jane.    London,  1904. 

1899.  Camac  Sahib.    London,  1899. 

1900.  The  Lackey's  Carnival.    London,  1900. 
1900.  Mrs.  Dane's  Defence.     London,  1905. 

1903.  Whitewashing  Julia.     London,  1905. 

1904.  Joseph  Entangled.     New  York,  1906. 
1906.  The  Hypocrites.    New  York,  1908. 

1908.  Dolly  Reforming  Herself.    London,  1908. 
1910.  We  Can't  Be  as  Bad  as  All  That.    New  York, 

1910. 


254   THE  CONTEMPORARY  DRAMA  OF  ENGLAND 

1913.     The  Divine  Gift.     London,  1913. 

1913.  Mary  Goes  First.     London,  1913. 
1915.     The  Lie.     New  York,  1915. 

Knowles,  James  Sheridan  (1784-1862) 
1820.     Virginius.     London,  1820. 
1825.     William  Tell.     London,  1825. 

1832.  The  Hunchback.     London,  1832. 

1833.  The  Wife.    London,  1833. 
1837.     The  Love  Chase.     London,  1837. 

The    Dramatic    Works    of   James    Sheridan 
Knowles.     2  vols.     London,  1856. 
Lawrence,  D.  H. 

1914.  The  Widowing  of  Mrs.  Holroyd.   London,  1914. 
LovELL,  George  William  (1804-1878) 

1842.    Love's  Sacrifice;    or,  The  Rival  Merchants. 

Lacy  (67). 
1846.    The  Wife's  Secret.    Lacy  (82). 
Lovell,  Maria  (1803-1877) 

1851.     Ingomar  the  Barbarian.     Adapted  from  Fried- 
rich  Halm's  Der  Sohn  der  Wildniss.    Lon- 
don, 1854. 
Marston,  Westland  (1819-1890) 

1841.     The  Patrician's  Daughter.    London,  1841. 

1849.  Strathmore.     London,  1849. 

1850.  Marie  de  Meranie.     London,  1850. 
1858.    A  Hard  Struggle.    Lacy  (48). 

1863.    Donna   Diana.    From   Moreto's   El  Desden 
con  el  Desden. 

1866.  A  Favorite  of  Fortune. 

1867.  A  Hero  of   Romance.     From   Feuillet's   Le 

Roman  d'un  Jeune  Homme  Pauvre. 
The  Dramatic  and  Poetical  Works  of  Westland 
Marston.    2  vols.    London,  1876. 


BIBLIOGRA.PHICAL  APPENDIX  255 

Masefield,  John. 

1908.    The  Tragedy  of  Nan.    London,  1909. 

1910.  The  Tragedy  of  Pompey  the  Great.    London, 

1910. 
Philip  the  King.    London,  1914. 
The  Faithful.    London,  1915. 
Mason,  A.  E.  W.  (1865-       ) 

1911.  The  Witness  for  the  Defence.     S.  French. 
1914.    Green  Stockings.     S.  French. 

Maugham,  William  Somerset  (1874-        ) 

1903.     A    Man    of    Honour.      Fortnightly    Review, 
1903. 

1907.  Lady  Frederick. 

1908.  Jack  Straw.    London,  1912. 

1908.  Mrs.  Dot.    London,  1912. 

1909.  Smith.    London,  1913. 

1910.  The  Tenth  Man.    London,  1913. 
1914.  The  Land  of  Promise.    London,  1914. 

McEvoY,  Charles  (1879-        ) 

1907.     David  Ballard.     London,  1907. 
Meredith,  George  (1828-1909) 

1910.     The  Sentimentalists.     London,  1912. 
Merivale,  Herman  Charles  (1839-1906) 

1872.    A  Son  of  the  Soil.     Founded  on  Ponsard's 
Lion  Amour eux.    Lacy  (97). 

1874.  The  White  Pilgrim.    Founded  on  a  legend  by 

Gilbert  a  Beckett.     Lacy  (113). 
Merivale,  H.  C.  and  Grove,  F.  C. 

1879.    Forget-Me-Not. 
Merivale,  H.  C.  and  Simpson,  J.  Palgrave. 

1875.  All  for   Her.    From    Dickens'  A     Tale    of 

Two  Cities. 
Alone.    Lacy  (103). 


256   THE  CONTEMPORARY  DRAMA  OF  ENGLAND 

Moffat,  Graham 

1911.    Bunty  Pulls  the  Strings. 
MoNKHOusE,  Allan 

1910.  The  Choice. 

See  Four  Tragedies,  London,  1913. 
Moore,  George  (1857-       ) 

1892.  The  Strike  at  Arlingford.    London,  1893. 
1900.    The     Bending     of     the     Bough.      London, 

1900. 

1911.  Esther  Waters. 
Morton,  John  Maddison  (1811-1891) 

Lend  Me  Five  Shillings.    Lacy. 
Grimshaw,  Bagshaw  and  Bradshaw.    Lacy. 
1847.    Box  and  Cox. 
Murray,  Gilbert  (1866-       ) 

1899.    Carlyon  Sahib.    London,  1900. 

From  Euripides :  Hippolytus ;  Bacchce ;  Trojan 
Women ;  Electra ;  Medea.     Played  at  Court 
Theatre,  1902-1907. 
Oxenford,  J.  (1812-1877) 

1875.    The  Two  Orphans.   From  Dennery's  Les  Deux 

Orphelines.    London,  1875. 
1859.    Ivy  Hall.    From  Feuillet's  Le  Roman  d'un 
Jeune  Homme  Pauvre. 
The  World  of  Fashion.    From  Scribe  and  Le- 
gouvi,  Les  Droits  de  Fie.    Lacy  (55). 
Parker,  Louis  Napoleon  (1852-       ) 

1893.  Gudgeons. 
1896.    Rosemary. 

1909.  Beethoven. 

1910.  Pomander  Walk.    London,  1912. 

1911.  Disraeli.    London,  1913. 
1913.  Joseph  and  his  Brethren. 


BIBLIOGRAPHICAL  APPENDIX  257 

Phillips,  Stephen  (1868-1916) 

1901.  Paolo  and  Francesca.    London,  1900. 

1900.  Herod.    London,  1901. 

1902.  Ulysses.     London,  1902. 

The  Sin  of  David.    London,  1904. 

1906.  Nero.    London,  1906. 
PiNERO,  Sir  Arthur  Wing  (1855-        ) 

1881.  The  Money  Spinner. 

1883.  Lords  and  Commons. 

1885.  The  Magistrate.    London,  1892. 

1886.  The  Schoolmistress.    London,  1894. 

1886.  The  Hobby  Horse.    London,  1892. 

1887.  Dandy  Dick.    London,  1893. 

1888.  Sweet  Lavender.    London,  1893. 

1888.  The  Weaker  Sex.    London,  1894. 

1889.  The  Profligate.    London,  1891. 

1890.  The  Cabinet  Minister.    London,  1892. 

1891.  Lady  Bountiful.    London,  1891. 
1891.  The  Times.    London,  1891. 
1893.  The  Amazons.    London,  1895. 

1893.  The  Second  Mrs.  Tanqueray.    London,  1895. 

1895.  The  Notorious  Mrs.  Ebbsmith.   London,  1896. 

1895.  The  Benefit  of  the  Doubt.    London,  1896. 

1897.  The  Princess  and  the  Butterfly.    London,  1898. 

1898.  Trelawney  of  the  "Wells."    London,  1899. 

1899.  The  Gay  Lord  Quex.    London,  1900. 

1901.  Iris.    London,  1902. 

1903.  Letty.    London,  1904. 

1904.  A  Wife  without  a  Smile.    London,  1905. 
1906.  His  House  in  Order.    London,  1906. 

1908.  The  Thunderbolt.    London,  1909. 

1909.  Midchannel.    London,  1911. 

1911.  Preserving  Mr.  Panmure.    London,  1912. 


258   THE  CONTEMPORARY  DRAMA  OF  ENGLAND 

1913.    Play-goers.    London,  1913. 
1912.    The  "Mind  the  Pamt"  Girl.    London,  1913. 
1915.     The  Big  Drum. 
Planche,  James  Robinson  (1796-1880) 

1820.  The  Vampire.     London,  1820. 

1821.  Kenilworth  Castle ;    or,  The  Days  of  Queen 

Bess. 

1822.  Maid  Marian.    Opera.    London,  1822. 
1826.     Oberon.     London,  1826. 

1828.  Charies  XII;  or.  The  Siege  of  Stralsund. 
Cumberland's  British  Theatre  (25). 

1840.  The  Sleeping  Beauty  in  the  Wood.  London, 
1840. 

1843.    Fortunio.    London,  1843. 

1843.  The  Fair  One  with  the  Golden  Locks.  Christ- 
mas Piece.     London,  1852. 

1849.  Island  of  Jewels.  Christmas  Piece.  Founded 
on  Serpentin  Vert  of  Countess  d'Aulnoy. 
London,  1850. 

1846.    The  "  Birds  "  of  Aristophanes.    London,  1846. 

1849.     Beauty  and  the  Beast.     London,  1849. 

The  Extravaganzas  of  J.  R.  PlanchI,  1825- 
1871.    5  vols.    London,  1879. 
Planche,  J.  R.  and  Dance,  Charles. 

1831.  Olympic  Revels ;  or,  Prometheus  and  Pandora. 
Buriesque.     London,  1834. 

1836.    Riquet  with  the  Tuft.    From   the  French 
Riquet  d,  la  Houppe.    Extravaganza.    Lon- 
don, 1837. 
Reade,  Charles  (1814-1884) 

1851.  The  Ladies'  Battle.  Abridged  from  French 
of  Scribe  and  Legouv^.     Lacy  (108). 

1853.    Gold  I    From  Zola.' 3  L'Assommoir.    Lacy  (11). 


BIBLIOGRAPHICAL  APPENDIX  259 

1854.    The  Courier  of  Lyons.    From  the  French  of 
Moreau,  Siraudin  and  Delacour,    Lacy  (15). 
Played  also  as  The  Lyons  Mail. 
Robertson,  Thomas  William  (1829-1871) 

1864.  David  Garrick.    From  French  of  Melisville's 

Sullivan.    Lacy  (117). 

1865.  Society.    Lacy.     (71). 

1866.  Ours.     De  Witt,  New  York,  1879. 

1867.  Caste.     De  Witt,  New  York,  1878. 

1868.  Play.    Lacy  (1969). 

1869.  School.    From  German  of  Roderick  Benedix : 

Aschenbrodel.    De  Witt,  New  York,  1879. 

1869.  Home.    From  French   of  Augier:    L'Aven- 

turiere.    De  Witt,  New  York,  1879. 

1870.  M.  P.    Lacy  (1963) 

The  Principal  Dramatic  Works  of  Thomas  W. 
Robertson.    Edited  by  T.  W.  Robertson, 
the  Younger.     London,  1889. 
Selby,  Charles  (1802  ?-1863) 

1843.    Robert  Macaire ;  or,  L'Auberge  des  Adrets, 
or.  The  Two  Murderers.     Duncombe  (123). 
Sharp,  Willlvm  (1855-1905) 

A  Northern  Night.    London,  1894. 
The  Passion  of  Pere  Hilarion.    London,  1894. 
The  Birth  of  a  Soul.     London,  1894. 
The  Fallen  God.    London,  1894. 
1900.    The  House  of  Usna.     London,  1900. 
The  Immortal  Hour.     London,  1900. 
Shaw,  George  Bernard  (1856-        ) 

1892.     Widowers'  Houses.     London,  1898. 

The  Philanderer.    London,  1898. 
1902.    Mrs.  Warren's  Profession.    London,  1898. 
1894.    Arms  and  the  Man.    London,  1898. 


260       THE   CONTEMPORARY  DRAMA  OF  ENGLAND 

1897.    Candida.    London,  1898. 

1897.    The  Man  of  Destiny.    London,  1898. 

1900.    You  Never  Can  Tell.    London,  1898. 

Plays  Pleasant  and  Unpleasant  contain  the 
above  in  2  vols.     London,  1898. 

1897.    The  Devil's  Disciple.    London,  1900. 

1906.     Cffisar  and  Cleopatra.    London,  1900. 

1900.    Captain  Brassbound's  Conversion.    London, 
1900. 
The  above  three  in  Plays  for  Puritans.    Lon- 
don, 1900. 

1905.    Man  and  Superman.     London,  1903. 

1903.  John  Bull's  Other  Island.     London,  1907. 

1904.  How  He  Lied  to  Her  Husband.    London,  1907. 

1905.  Major  Barbara.    London,  1909. 

1906.  The  Doctor's  Dilemma.     London,  1911. 

1908.  Getting  Married.     London,  1911. 

1909.  Press  Cuttings.     London,  1909. 

1909.  The  Shewing  Up  of  Blanco  Posnet.    London, 

1911. 

1910.  MisalUance.    London,  1914. 

1911.  Fanny's  First  Play.     London,  1914. 

1912.  Androcles  and  the  Lion.     New  York,  1913. 

1913.  Pygmahon.     Berlin,  1913 ;   London,  1914. 
1916.    The  Great  Catherine.    New  York,  1915. 

Sims,  George  Robert  (1847-       ) 
1881.    The  Lights  o'  London. 

1885.  Harbour  Lights. 

1886.  The  Romany  Rye. 
1888.    The  Scarlet  Sin. 
1896.    Two  Little  Vagabonds. 

Sims,  G.  R.  and  Pettitt,  Henry. 
1883.    In  the  Ranks. 


BIBLIOGRAPHICAL  APPENDIX  261 

Simpson,  John  Palgrave  (1807-1887). 

1857.  Daddy  Hardacre. 

1859.  A  School  for  Coquettes.     Lacy  (91). 

1861.    A  Scrap  of  Paper.    From  Sardou's  Pattes  de 
Motiche.     Lacy  (51). 
Shadows  of  the  Past.    Lacy  (97). 
Simpson,  J.  Palgrave  and  Dale,  Felix. 
1868.    Time  and  the  Hour.    Lacy  (81). 

SOWERBY,   GiTHA. 

1912.     Rutherford  and  Son.    London,  1912. 
Stevenson,  Robert  Louis  (1856-1894)  and  Henley, 
W.  E.  (1849-1903) 
1882.    Deacon  Brodie. 
1890.    Beau  Austin.    London,  1892. 

Robert  Macaire.    London,  1897. 
SuTRO,  Alfred  (1863-       ) 

1904.    The  Walls  of  Jericho.     S.  French. 
1904.    MoUentrave  on  Women.    London,  1905. 

1906.  The  Fascinating  Mr.  Vanderveldt.    London, 

1906. 

1907.  John  Glayde's  Honour.    London,  1907. 

1908.  The  Builder  of  Bridges.    London,  1909. 
1911.    The  Perplexed  Husband.    London,  1913. 

Talfourd,  Thomas  Noon  (1795-1854) 

1836.    Ion.    London,  1835. 
Taylor,  Sir  Henry  (1800-1886) 

1847.    Philip  van  Artevelde.    London,  1834. 
Taylor,  Tom  (1817-1880) 

1855.    Still  Waters  Run  Deep.    Lacy  (22). 

1858.  Our  American  Cousin. 

1860.  The  Overland  Route.    Lacy  (No.  1853). 
1863.    The  Ticket  of  Leave  Man.    From  Brisebarre 

and  Nus,  Le  Retour  de  Mdun.    Lacy  (59). 


262   THE  CONTEMPORARY  DRAMA  OF  ENGLAND 

1869.    The  Fool's  Revenge.    From  Hugo's  Le  Rm 
s' amuse.    Lacy  (43). 

1871.  Joan  of  Arc. 
1875.    Anne  Boleyn. 

Historical  Dramas  of  Tom  Taylor.    London, 
1877. 
Taylob,  Tom  and  Dubourg,  A.  W. 

1859.     New  Men  and  Old  Acres.     Lacy  (90). 
Taylor,  Tom  and  Reade,  Charles  (1814-1884). 
1852.     Masks  and  Faces.     London,  1854. 
1854.     A  King's  Rival.     London,  1854. 
1854.    Two  Loves  and  a  Life.    London,  1854. 
Todhunter,  John  (1839-1915) 

1893.  The  Black  Cat. 

1894.  The  Comedy  of  Sighs. 
Webb,  Charles. 

1856.    Belphegor,  or.  The  Mountebank.    From  Pail- 
lasse of  Dennery  and  Fournier. 
Wilde,  Oscar  Fingall  O'Flahertie  Wills  (1856-1900) 

1892.  Lady  Windermere's  Fan.     London,  1893. 

1893.  A  Woman  of  No  Importance.     London,  1894. 

1895.  Salome.    Paris,  1893 ;  London,  1894. 
1895.    An  Ideal  Husband.     London,  1899. 

1895.    The  Importance  of  Being  Earnest.    London, 
1899. 
Wili5,  W.  G.  (1828-1891) 

1872.  Medea  in  Corinth. 

1872.  Charies  the  First.    Edinburgh  and  London, 

1873. 

1873.  Eugene  Aram. 

1873.    Olivia.      From    Goldsmith's    The    Vicar    of 

Wakefield. 
1878.    NellGwynne. 


BIBLIOGRAPHICAL  APPENDIX  263 

1878.  Vanderdecken.     (The  Flying  Dutchman.) 

1883.  Claudian. 

Zangwill,  Israel  (1864-        ) 

1899.  Children  of  the  Ghetto. 

1903.  Merely  Mary  Ann. 

1908.  The  Melting  Pot.    London,  1909. 

1911.  The  War  God.    London,  1911. 

1912.  The  Next  Rehgion.     London,  1912. 

In  addition  to  the  above  consider  the  plays  of  Shirley 
Brooks,  R.  B.  Brough,  William  Brough,  Frederick  Wil- 
liam Broughton,  Savile  Clarke,  J.  Sterling  Coyne,  Henry 
T.  Craven,  Charles  Dance,  Edward  Falconer,  Augustus 
Harris,  Colin  Hazelwood,  Henry  Herman,  Thomas  Hailes 
Lacy,  Slingsby Lawrence  (G.  H.Lewes),  Charles  Maltby, 
Charles  Matthews,  Paul  Merritt,  Henry  Pettitt,  T.  Edgar 
Pemberton,  Watts  Phillips,  Robert  Reece,  George  Rob- 
erts, S.  Theyre  Smith,  Edward  Sterling,  W.  E.  Suter, 
Francis  Talfourd,  Charles  Thomas. 

BCX)K  LIST 

Bibliographies,  Dictionaries,  and  Plat  Lists 

Adams,  W.  D.  A  Dictionary  of  the  Drama,  A-G. 
Philadelphia,  1904. 

Bates,  K.  L.  and  Godfrey,  L.  B.  English  Drama:  A 
Working  Basis.    Wellesley  College,  1896. 

Chandler,  F.  W.  Aspects  of  Modern  Drama.  Appen- 
dix.   New  York,  1914. 

Clapp,  J.  B.  and  Edgett,  E.  F.  Plays  of  the  Present. 
Dunlap  Society  Publications,     New  York,  1902. 

Clarence,  R.     The  Stage  Cyclopedia.    London,  1909. 

Faxon,  F.W.    Dramatic  Index.    Boston,  1909/. 


264   THE  CONTEMPORARY  DRAMA  OP  ENGLAND 

French,  S.  International  Descriptive  Catalogue  of  Plays 
and  Dramatic  Works.  London,  New  York.  1902- 
1904. 

LEWisoEtN,  L.  The  Modem  Drama.  Appendix.  New 
York,  1915. 

Lowe,  R.  W.  Bibliographical  Account  of  English  Theat- 
rical Literature.     London,  1888. 

Pascoe,  C.  E.    The  Dramatic  List.     London,  1879. 

Pence,  J.  H.  The  Magazine  and  the  Drama :  an  Index. 
Dunlap  Society  Publications,  VoL  17.  New  York, 
1896. 

Scott,  C.    The  Drama  of  Yesterday  and  To-day.    Appen- 
dix.   London,  1899. 
Catalogue  of  the  British  Museum  with  Supplement. 
See  plays  listed  under  Cumberland,  Duncombe,  French, 

and  Lacy. 
Play  Lists  of  W.  H.  Baker  and  Company,  Boston,  and 

The  Dramatic  Publishing  Company,  Chicago. 

Books  on  the  Theory  of  the  Theatre 

Archer,  Frank.  How  to  Write  a  Good  Play.  London,  1892. 
Archer,  W.    Playmaking,  a  Manual  of  Craftsmanship. 

London,  1912. 
Burton,  R.    How  to  See  a  Play.    New  York,  1914. 
Butcher,  S.  N.    Aristotle's  Theory  of  Poetry  and  Fine 

Art.    London,  1894. 
Caffin,  C.  H.    The  Appreciation  of  the  Drama.    New 

York,  1908. 
Courtney,  W.  L.    The  Idea  of  Tragedy.    London,  1900. 
Freytag,  G.    Technique  of  the  Drama.    Translated  by 

E.  J.  MacEwan.    New  York,  1895. 
Hamilton,  C.  M.    The  Theory  of  the  Theatre.    New 

York,  1910. 


BIBLIOGRAPHICAL  APPENDIX  265 

Hennequin,  a.    The  Art  of  Playwriting.    Boston,  1890. 

Lewes,  G.  H.  On  Actors  and  the  Art  of  Acting.  Lon- 
don, 1875. 

Matthews,  B.  A  Study  of  the  Drama.  Boston,  1910. 
Editor,  Publications  of  Dramatic  Museum  of  Colum- 
bia University.     3  Series,  1914,  1915,  1916. 

Meredith,  G.    The  Idea  of  Comedy.    London,  1879. 

PoLTi,  G.  Les  Trentesix  Situations  Dramatiques.  Paris, 
1895. 

Pbice,  W.  T.    The  Technique  of  the  Drama.    New  York, 
1897. 
Analysis  of  Play  Construction.     New  York,  1908. 

Schlegel,  a.  W.  von.  Lectures  on  Dramatic  Art 
and  Literature.  Translated  by  J.  Black.  London, 
1886. 

Symons,  a.    Plays,  Acting  and  Music.    London,  1909. 
Studies  in  Seven  Arts.    London,  1906. 

Magazine  Articles 

Courtney,  W.  L. 

Dramatic  Construction  and  the  Need  of  a  New 
Technique.     Qvurterly  Review,  219 :  80. 
Realistic  Drama.     Fortnightly  Review,  99 :  945. 
Dramatic  Criticism.    Contemporary  Review,  64 :  692. 

General  History  of  Drama  and  Theatre  of  the 
Period 

Archer,  W.  Article  on  Modem  English  Drama  in  En- 
cyclopedia Britannica,  11th  Edition.    London,  1910. 

Baker,  H.  B.  The  London  Stage,  1576-1903.  London, 
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Borsa,  M.  The  English  Stage  of  To-day.  Translated 
by  Brinton.    London,  1908. 


266   THE  CONTEMPORARY  DRAMA  OF  ENGLAND 

BuRNAND,  SiK  F.  C.  Recollections  and  Reminiscences. 
London,  1914. 

Cole,  J.  W.  Life  and  Theatrical  Times  of  Charles  Kean. 
2  vols.    London,  1859. 

DiBDiN,  J.  C.  Annals  of  the  Edinburgh  Stage.  Edin- 
burgh, 1888. 

FiLON,  A.    The  English  Stage.    London,  1897. 

Fitzgerald,  P.  A  New  History  of  the  Stage.  London, 
1882. 

MoLLOY,  J.  F.  Romance  of  the  Irish  Stage.  2  vols. 
New  York,  1897. 

ScHELLiNG,  F.  E.    English  Drama.    New  York,  1914. 

Scott,  C.  The  Drama  of  Yesterday  and  To-day.  Lon- 
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Stahl,  E.  L.  Das  Englische  Theater  im  19.  Jahrhundert. 
Leipzig,  1914. 

Thorndike,  a.  H.    Tragedy.    Boston,  1908. 

Titterton,  W.  R.  From  Theatre  to  Music  Hall.  Lon- 
don, 1912. 

Traill,  H.  D.  Social  England.  Vol.  IV.  London, 
1896-1897. 

Wtndham,  H.  S.  Annals  of  the  Covent  Garden  Theatre. 
2  vols.    London,  1905. 

Chapter  I.    The  Early  Victorian  Theatre 

A  Beckett,  G.  A.  Quizziology  of  the  British  Drama. 
London,  1846. 

Baker,  H.  B.  The  London  Stage,  1576-1903.  Lon- 
don, 1904. 

Bellows,  H.  Claims  of  the  Drama.  Introduction  by 
J.  B.  Buckstone.    London,  1859. 

Cole,  J.  W.  Life  and  Theatrical  Times  of  Charles  Kean. 
2  vols.    London,  1859. 


BIBLIOGRAPHICAL  APPENDIX  267 

FiTZBALL,  E.    Thirty-five  Years  of  a  Dramatic  Author's 

Life.     London,  1858. 
HoRNE,  R.  H.    The  New  Spirit  of  the  Age.    London, 

1845. 
Nicholson,  W.    The  Struggle  for  a  Free  Stage  in  London. 

Boston,  1906. 
Planche,  J.  R.    Recollections  and  Reflections.    2  vob. 

London,  1872. 

Extravaganzas.    5  vols.    London,  1879. 

The  Drama  at  Home.    Extravaganza.    London,  1844. 
Stahl,  E.  L.    Das  Englische  Theater  im  19.  Jahrhunderty 

Leipzig,  1914. 
Walsh,  T.    Life  of  Dion  Boucicault.    Dunlap  Society 

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Magazine  Articles 

Amateur   Theatricals   of   Dickens.      Eclectic   Magazine, 

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Archer,  W.    The  Life  of  Macready.    New  York,  1890. 

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Beers,  H.  A.  English  Romanticism  in  the  Nineteenth 
Century.    New  York,  1901. 


268   THE  CONTEMPORARY  DRAMA  OF  ENGLAND 

Brereton,  a.    Life  of  Irving.    2  vols.    London,  1908. 
Cole,  J.  W.    Life  and  Theatrical  Times  of  Charles  Kean. 

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Coleman,  J.    Players  and  Playwrights  I  have  Known. 

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Memoirs  of  Samuel  Phelps.    London,  1886. 
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Matthews,  B.  and  Hutton,  L.    Editors,  Actors  and 

Actresses  of  Great  Britain  and  the  United  States. 

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Courtney,   W.  L.     Browning  as   a   Writer  of  Plays. 

Fortnightly  Review,  39  :  888. 
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Chapter  III.    Adaptation  and  Experiment 

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Bancroft,  Marie  Wilton,  and  Squire  Bancroft.    Mr. 

and  Mrs.  Bancroft  on  and  off  the  Stage.    2  vols. 

London,  1888. 
Bancroft,  Sir  S.    Recollections  of  Sixty  Years.    London, 

1909. 
Coleman,  J.    Players  and  Playwrights  I  Have  Known. 

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Nights  at  the  Play.     2  vols.    London,  1883. 
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Archer,  W.      George    Henry  Lewes    and    the    Stage. 
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270   THE  CONTEMPORARY  DRAMA  OF  ENGLAND 

BouciCAULT,  D.     Debut  as  a  Dramatist.     North  Ameri- 
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Leaves    from    Diary   of.     North   American   Review, 
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Chapter  IV.    Toward  a  New  Engush  Theatre 

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Essays."    London,  1882. 
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Coleman,  J.    Players  and  Playwrights  I  Have  Known. 

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Nights  at  the  Play.    2  vols.    London,  1883. 
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Lewes,  G.  H.  On  Actors  and  the  Art  of  Acting.  London, 
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MacKinnon,  A.  The  Oxford  Amateurs:  A  Short  His- 
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Marston,  W.  Recollections  of  our  Recent  Actors.  2 
vols.    London,  1888. 

MoRLEY,  H.  A  Playgoer's  Notebook,  1851-1866.  Lon- 
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Morris,  M.  Essays  in  Theatrical  Criticism.  London, 
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Pemberton,  T.  E.  Charies  Dickens  and  the  Stage. 
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John  Hare,  Comedian,  1865-1895.    London,  1895. 
The  Kendals ;  a  Biography.     New  York,  1900. 
Sir    Charies   Wyndham,    a   Biography.       London, 
1904. 

Planche,  J.  R.  Suggestions  for  Establishing  an  EngUsh 
Art  Theatre.     London,  1879. 

Scott,  C.  The  Drama  of  Yesterday  and  To-day.  Lon- 
don, 1899. 

Stahl,  E.  L.  Das  Englische  Theater  im  19.  Jahrhundert. 
Leipzig,  1914. 

Terry,  E.    The  Story  of  My  Life.    London,  1908. 

Yates,  E.  Recollections  and  Experiences.  2  vols.  Lon- 
don, 1885. 

Magazine  Articles 

Archer,  Wm.     Henrik  Ibsen.    St.  James',  48 :  27 ;   104. 
Arnold,  M.    The  French  Play  in  London.     Nineteenth 

Century,  6 :  228. 
GossE,  E.  W.     Henrik  Ibsen,  the  Norwegian  Satirist. 

Fortnightly  Review,  19 :  74. 


272       THE   CONTEMPORARY  DRAMA    OF  ENGLAND 

Anonymous.  Modem  British  Drama.  Eclectic  Maga- 
zine, 46 :  29. 

Anonymous.  The  Victorian  Stage.  Quarterly  Review, 
197 :  78. 

See  dramatic  criticisms  by  Westland  Marston,  in  The 
AthencBum,  1882,  jf. 

See  reviews,  essays,  etc.,  in  The  Theaire,  edited  by 
Clement  Scott,  1880,  /. 

See  reviews  in  department,  The  Stage,  in  The  Academy, 
1874,  #. 

Chapter  V.    Dramatists  of  Transition 

Archer,  W.    English  Dramatists  of  To-day.    London, 

1882. 

About  the  Theatre.    London,  1886. 
BoRSA,  M.     The  English  Stage  of  To-day.     London, 

1908. 
Browne,  E.  A.    W.  S.  Gilbert.    London,  1907. 
Carr,  J.  W.  C.    Some  Eminent  Victorians.    London, 

1908. 
Cook,  D.    Hours  with  the  Players.    London,  1881. 

Nights  at  the  Play.    London,  1883. 
FiLON,  A.    The  English  Stage.    London,  1897. 
Gilbert,  W.  S.    Original   Plays.    3**  Series.    London, 

1875-1879. 

A  Stage  Play.    In  Publications  of  Dramatic  Museum 

of  Columbia  Univ.  3*^  Ser.  1916. 
Lawrence,  A.    Life  of  Sir  Arthur  Sullivan.    London, 

1889. 
Yates,  E.      Recollections    and   Experiences.     London, 

1885. 


BIBLIOGRAPHICAL  APPENDIX  273 

Magazine  Articles 

Buchanan,  R.  Modem  Drama  and  its  Critics.  Con- 
temporary Review,  56 :  908. 

Craik,  D.  M.  Dramatic  Art  of  the  Present  Day. 
Nineteenth  Century,  20 :  416. 

Mebivale,  H.  English  Drama  of  To-day.  Eclectic 
Magazine,  107 :  383. 

Chapter  VI.    Henry  Arthxjr  Jones 

Borsa,  M.  The  English  Stage  of  To-day.  London, 
1898. 

Clark,  B.  H.  British  and  American  Dramatists  of  To- 
day.   New  York,  1915. 

Filon,  a.    The  English  Stage.    London,  1897. 

Frohman,  D.  Memories  of  a  Manager.  Garden  City, 
1911. 

Howe,  P.  P.    Dramatic  Portraits.    London,  1913. 

Jones,  H.  A.    The  Renascence  of  the  English  Drama. 
London,  1895. 
Fomidations  of  a  National  Drama.    London,  1912. 

Shaw,  G.  B.  Dramatic  Opinions  and  Essays.  London, 
1907. 

See  Jones,  H.  A.  Prefaces  to  Saints  and  Sinners,  The 
Case  of  Rebellious  Susan,  The  Divine  Gift.  See  also 
Jones's  Preface  to  Filon's  The  English  Stage. 

Magazine  Articles 

Dickinson,  T.  H.  Henry  Arthur  Jones  and  the  Dra- 
matic Renascence.    North  American  Review,  1915. 

Howells,  W.  D.  The  Plays  of  Henry  Arthur  Jones. 
North  American  Review,  1907. 


274   THE  CONTEMPORARY  DRAMA  OP  ENGLAND 

Jones,  H.  A.  Literary  Critics  and  the  Drama.  Nine- 
teenth Century,  53 :  614. 

Literature  and  the  Modern  Drama.      Atlantic,  98: 
796. 

Cornerstones  of  Modem  Drama.    Fortnightly  Review, 
86 : 1084. 

For  material  and  criticism  on  Jones's  early  plays  see 
The  Theatre,  edited  by  Clement  Scott,  1880,  /. 

Chapter  VII.    Arthur  Wing  Pinero 

BORSA,  M.  The  English  Stage  of  To-day.  London, 
1908. 

Clark,  B.  H.  British  and  American  Dramatists  of  To- 
day.   New  York,  1915. 

FiLON,  A.    The  English  Stage.    London,  1897. 

Frohman,  D,  Memories  of  a  Manager.  Garden  City, 
1911. 

Fyfe,  H.  Arthur  Wing  Pinero,  Playwright.  London, 
1902. 

Hale,  E.  E.    Dramatists  of  To-day.    New  York,  1911. 

Howe,  P.  P.    Dramatic  Portraits.    London,  1913. 

Shaw,  G.  B.  Dramatic  Opinions  and  Essays.  London, 
1907. 

Stoecker,  W.  Pinero' s  Dramen;  "Studien  ueber  Motive, 
Charaktere  und  Technik.     Anglia.     Vol.  35. 

Walkley,  a.  B.    Drama  and  Life.    London,  1908. 

Magazine  Articles 

Pinero,  A.  W.    Robert  Louis  Stevenson  as  a  Dramatist. 

Critic,  42 :  341. 
Wedmore,  Sir  F.    Literature  and  the  Theatre.    Nine- 

teenth  Century  and  After,  1902. 


BIBLIOGRAPHICAL  APPENDIX  275 

White,    J.    P.    Mr.    Pinero's    The  Gay    Lord    Quex. 

Harvard  Monthly,  32 : 1. 
For  material  and  criticisms  on  Pinero's  early  plays  see 

The  Theatre,  edited  by  Clement  Scott,  1880,  /. 

Chapter  VIII.    The  Busy  Nineties 

Archer,  W.    The  Theatrical  "World"  for  1893-1897. 

BoRSA,  M.    The  English  Stage  of  To-day.     London,  1908. 

Clark,  B.  H.     British  and  American  Dramatists  of  To- 
day.   New  York,  1915. 

Davidson,  J.    Article  on  Pantomime.    In  Scaramouch  in 
Naxos.     London,  1889. 

Howe,  P.  P.     Dramatic  Portraits.     London,  1913. 

Ingleby,  L.  C.     Oscar  Wilde,  a  Study.     London,  1907. 

Jackson,  H.     The  Eighteen  Nineties.     London,  1913. 

Kennedy,  J.  M.    English  Literature,  1880-1913.    Lon- 
don, 1913. 

Laurent,  R.     Etudes  Anglaises.    Paris,  1910. 

Ransome,  a.    The  Life  of  Oscar  Wilde,  a  Critical  Study. 
London,  1912. 

Shaw,  G.  B.    Dramatic  Opinions  and  Essays.    London, 
1907. 

Sherard,  R.  H.     Oscar  Wilde.    London,  1906. 
The  Real  Oscar  Wilde.    London,  1915. 

Walkley,  a.  B.     Drama  and  Life.    London,  1908. 

Wilde,  O.    The  Soul  of  Man  under  SociaHsm.    London, 
1891. 
The  Truth  of  Masks,  in  Intentions,  1891. 

Magazine  Articles 

Archer,    W.     Drama    in    the    Doldrums.     Fortnightly 
Review,  58 :  146. 


276   THE  CONTEMPORARY  DRAMA  OF  ENGLAND 

New  Drama  and  the  Free  Stage.    Fortnightly  Re- 
view, 56 :  663. 

Plays  and  Acting  of  the  Season.     Fortnightly  Re- 
view, 60 :  225. 

Recent  Plays.     Fortnightly  Review,  61 :  600. 
The  Mausoleum  of  Ibsen.     Fortnightly  Review,  1893. 
Ghosts  and  Gibberings.     Pall  Mall  Gazette,  1893. 

Irving,  H.  Drama  in  its  Relation  to  the  State.  Fort- 
nightly  Review,  70  :  88. 

Moore,  G.  Our  Dramatists  and  their  Literature.  Fort- 
nightly Review,  52 :  620. 

Tree,  H.  B.  Some  Aspects  of  Drama  To-day.  North 
American  Review,  164 :  66. 

Wedmore,  F.  Position  of  the  Drama  in  England. 
Nineteenth  Century,  44 :  224. 

Consult  columns  of  the  Fortnightly  Review,  The  Theatre, 
Pall  Mall  Gazette,  The  Truth,  The  Daily  Telegraph, 
Comedy,  edited  by  J.  T.  Grein. 

Chapter  IX.    The  New  Organization 

Archer,  W.  and  Barker,  H.  G.    Scheme  and  Estimates 

for  a  National  Theatre.    London,  1908. 
BoRSA,  M.    The  English  Stage  of  To-day.    London,  1898. 
FowELL,  F.  and  Palmer,  F.    Censorship  in  England. 

London,  1913. 
Howe,  P.  P.    The  Repertory  Theatre,  a  Record  and  a 

Criticism.    London,  1911. 
Lee,  Sidney.    Shakespeare  on  the  Stage.    London,  1906. 
McCarthy,  D.  The  Court  Theatre,  1904-1907.    London, 

1907. 
Moore,  G .    Introduction  to  "  The  Bending  of  the  Bough.** 

London,  1900. 

Impressions  and  Opinions.    London,  1891. 


BIBLIOGRAPHICAL  APPENDIX  277 

Shaw,  G.  B.    Dramatic  Opinions  and  Essays.    London, 

1907. 
Compare  Thalasso,  A.    Le  ThSdtre  litre.    Paris/ 1909. 
See  The  Stage  Year  Book,  1904,  /. 

Magazine  Articles 

Archer,  W.  Rise  of  Theatrical  Subventions.  Fort- 
nightly Review,  79 :  127. 

Bancroft,  Sir  S.  B.  Dramatic  Thoughts,  Retrospec- 
tive, Anticipative.     Fortnightly  Review,  83  :  933. 

Beerbohm,  M.  Need  for  Morning  Performances  of 
Plays.     Saturday  Review,  92 :  428. 

Benson,  F.  R.  A  National  Theatre.  Nineteenth  Cen- 
tury, 49 :  772. 

Fyfe,  H.  H.  Toward  a  National  Theatre.  Fortnightly 
Review,  75 :  812. 

Jones,  H.  A.  Recognition  of  Drama  by  the  State. 
Nineteenth  Century,  55 :  449. 

Moore,  G.  Preface  to  "The  Bending  of  the  Bough.** 
Fortnightly  Review,  73 :  317. 

Shaw,  G.  B.  DiflSculties  in  the  Way  of  an  Endowed 
Theatre.    Saturday  Review,  85 :  204. 

Chapter  X.    George  Bernard  Shaw 

Bab,  J.    Bernard  Shaw.    Beriin,  1910. 

Burton,  R.  Bernard  Shaw,  the  Man  and  the  Mask. 
New  York,  1916. 

Chesterton,  G.  K.  George  Bernard  Shaw.  London, 
1910. 

Clare,  B.  H.  British  and  American  Dramatists  of  To- 
day.   New  York,  1915. 

Hale,  E.  E.    Dramatists  of  To-day.    New  York,  1911. 


278   THE  CONTEMPORARY  DRAMA  OF  ENGLAND 

Hamon,  a.  F.     The  Technique  of  Bernard  Shaw's  Plays. 

Translated  by  F.  Maurice.     London,  1912. 

The   Twentieth    Century   Molifere.     Translated   by 

E.  &  C.  Paul.     London,  1915. 
Henderson,  A.    George  Bernard  Shaw,  His  Life  and 

Works.     Cincinnati,  1911. 
Howe,  P.  P.    Bernard  Shaw,  a  Critical  Study.    London, 

1915. 

Dramatic  Portraits.    London,  1913. 
HuNEKER,  J.     Iconoclasts  :  a  Book  of  Dramatists.    New 

York,  1905. 
Jackson,  H.    Bernard  Shaw :  a  Study  and  an  Apprecia- 
tion.    London,  1907. 
McCabe,  J.     George  Bernard  Shaw.     London,  1914. 
Montague,  C.  E.    Dramatic  Values.    London,  1911. 
Muret,  M.     Les  contemporains  Strangers.    Paris,  1914. 
Scott-James,  R.  A.    Personality  in  Literature.    London, 

1913. 
Shaw,  G.  B.     Dramatic  Opinions  and  Essays.    London, 

1907. 

Introductions  to  Plays. 

The  Quintessence  of  Ibsenism,  1891,  1913. 
Walklet,  A.  B.    Drama  and  Life.    London,  1908. 

Magazine  Articles 

Chesterton,  G.  K.    A  Note  on  Shaw.     Independent 

Review,  8 :  81. 
Dickinson,  G.  Lowes.     Shakespeare,  Ibsen  and  Shaw. 

Independent  Review,  10  :  83. 
Howe,  P.  P.    Dramatic  Craftsmanship  of  Bernard  Shaw 

Fortnightly  Review,  100 :  132. 
Michaud,  R.    Bernard  Shaw.    Revue  de  Paris,  5 :  165. 


BIBLIOGRAPHICAL  APPENDIX  279 

Rogers,  A.  K.  Mr.  Bernard  Shaw's  Philosophy.  Hibbert 
Journal,  8 :  818. 

Chapter  XI.    Dramatists  of  the  Free  Theatre 

Clark,  B.  H.  British  and  American  Dramatists  of  To- 
day.   New  York,  1915. 

Dukes,  A.    Modern  Dramatists.    London,  1912. 

Galsworthy,  J.    The  Inn  of  Tranquillity.    London. 

Grein,  J.  T.    Premieres  of  the  Year.    London,  1901. 
Dramatic  Criticism.    4  Series.    London,  1899-1904. 

Hankin,  St.  J.  Dramatic  Works,  with  Introduction  by 
John  Drinkwater.     London,  1912. 

Herford,  C.  H.    Essays  and  Studies.    Oxford,  1914. 

Howe,  P.  P.     Dramatic  Portraits.    London,  1913. 

The  Repertory  Theatre,  a  Record  and  a  Criticism. 
London,  1911. 

Masefield,  J.  Introduction  to  The  Tragedy  of  Nan. 
London. 

McCarthy,  D.  The  Court  Theatre,  1904-1907.  Lon- 
don, 1907. 

Shaw,  G.  B.  Dramatic  Opinions  and  Essays.  London, 
1907. 

Walkley,  a.  B.     Drama  and  Life.    London,  1908. 

Consult  The  Stage  Year  Book.    London,  1904,  /. 

Magazine  Articles 

Archer,  W.  The  Theatrical  Situation.  Fortnightly  Re- 
view, 94 :  736. 

Baughan,  E.  a.  a  Practical  Repertory  Theatre. 
Fortnightly  Review,  95 :  298. 

Galsworthy,  J.  Some  Platitudes  Concerning  Drama. 
Atlantic,  104 :  768. 


280   THE  CONTEMPORARY  DRAMA  OP  ENGLAND 

Howe,  P.  P.     Galsworthy  as  a  Dramatist.     Fortnightly 
Review,  100 :  739. 

England's  New  Dramatists.    North  American  Review, 
198 :  218. 

Chapter  XII.    The  Challenge  op  the  Future 

Archer,  W.  and  Barker,  H.  G.    Scheme  and  Estimates 

for  a  National  Theatre.    London,  1908. 
Cannan,  G.    The  Joy  of  the  Theatre.    London,  1914. 
Carter,  H.    The  New  Spirit  in  Drama  and  Art.    New 

York,  1913. 
Craig,  G.    On  the  Art  of  the  Theatre.    Chicago,  1911. 

Toward  a  New  Theatre.    London,  1913. 
FowELL,  F.  and  Palmer,  F.    Censorship  in  England. 

London,  1913.  v  ( 

Howe,  P.  P.    Dramatic  Portraits.    London,  1913. 
Moderwell,  H.  K.    The  Theatre  T'o-day.    New  York, 

1914.  ^ 

Montague,  C.  E.    Dramatic  Values.    London,  1911. 
Palmer,  J.    The  Future  of  the  Theatre.    London,  1913. 
Symons,  a.    Plays,  Acting  and  Music.     London,  1909. 

Studies  in  Seven  Arts.    London,  1906.  ^ 

Walklet,  a.  B.    Drama  and  Life.    London,  1908. 

Magazine  Articles 

Barker,  H.  G.    The  Theatre,  the  Next  Phase.    Forum, 

44 :  159. 
Browne,  E.  A.    Barrie's  Dramatic  and  Social  Outlook. 

Fortnightly  Review,  1906. 
Pollack,  J.    Censorship.    Fortnightly  Review,  97 :  880. 
Stoker,    B.     Censorship   of   Stage   Plays.     NineteerUh 

Century,  66 :7M, 


BIBLIOGRAPHICAL  APPENDIX  281 

Anonymous.    The  Triumph  of  the  Censor.    Blackwoods, 

186 :  852. 
Williams,  J.  D.    The  Charm  that  is  Barrie.    Century 

Magazine,  October,  1914. 
Consult  The  Mask,  representing  the  theories  of  Gordon 

Craig,  1907,  jf;  The  Poetry  Review,  edited  by  Stephen 

Phillips ;  Poet  Lore,  Boston ;  The  English  Review,  etc. 


INDEX 


INDEX 


Abbey  Theatre,  Dublin,  169. 
A  Beckett,  Gilbert  A.,  70. 
Academy  of  Dramatic  Art, 

155. 
Achurch,  Janet  (Mrs.  Charles 

Charrington),  138,  188. 
Ads    and    Galatea,    Handel, 

239. 
Adaptation  and  translation, 

Boucicault  on,  7;    vogue 

of,  30  ff. 
Adelphi  Theatre,  4,  69. 
Admirable      Crichton,      The, 

Barrie,  226,  234. 
Affaires  sont  les  affaires,  Les, 

Mirbeau,  87. 
AJter  Long    Years,   Grundy, 

87. 
Afternoon  Theatre,  154. 
Albery,   James,    11,   56,  68, 

69. 
Alexander,  George,  149,  152, 

228. 
Alice  in  Wonderland,  233. 
Alice-Sit-By-lhe-Fire,  Barrie, 

234. 
Amazons,  The,  Pinero,  115. 
Ambassador,     The,     Hobbes, 

151. 
"American"  Comedy,  227. 
American     Copyright     Bill, 

138. 
Amusement  taverns,  4. 
Anatol,  Schnitzler,  trans,  by 

Barker,  223. 
Anderson,  Mary,  77. 


Andreyev,  199. 

Androcles  and  the  Lion,  Shaw, 
199,  201,  202,  203,  226, 
236. 

Andromache,  Murray,  159. 

Ann^  Blake,  Westland  Mar- 
ston,  19. 

Anne  Boleyn,  Taylor,  40. 

Anstey,  F.,  151. 

Antoine,  A.,  156,  158,  174. 

Archer,  William,  87,  91,  134, 
155,  157,  161,  189;  and 
Ibsen,  64,  139,  142;  Eng- 
lish Dramatists  of  To-day, 
66,  67;  on  Pinero,  110, 
129;  as  critic,  141;  on 
censorship,  143. 

Archer,  W.,  and  Barker,  H. 
G.,  Scheme  and  Estimates 
for  a  National  Theatre,  161. 

Arden  of  Feversham,  150. 

Arms  and  the  Man,  Shaw, 
165,  169,  188,  190,  200. 

Arnold,  M.,  62,  91,  134,  230. 

Arrah-na-Pogue,  Boucicault, 
39. 

Art,  nature  of,  181. 

Aschenbrddel,  Benedix.  Adap- 
ted as  School  by  Robertson, 
47. 

Astley's,  4. 

Athenaeum,  50,  66. 

Augier,  E.,  42,  43,  61,  127, 
211. 

Avenue  Theatre,  169.  188, 
205. 


285 


286 


INDEX 


Aylmer's     Secret. 
152. 


Phillips, 


Bab  Ballads,  Gilbert,  72. 
Babil  and  Bijou,  Boucicault, 

11. 
Badger,  Richard,  161. 
Baker,  Miss  Elizabeth,  160, 

167,  224. 
Bakst,  236. 
Balzac,  122,  123. 
Bancroft,  Sir  Squire  B.,  44, 

49;   quoted  on  Robertson, 

61. 
Bancroft,     Marie     Wilton-, 

41,  42,  44,  49,  156. 
Bancroft,  Mr.  and  Mrs.   S. 

B.  and  M.  W.,  49,  69,  71, 

110,  111,  137. 
Barker,  Granville,  135,  159, 

163-168,    169,    198,    199, 

207,  220-224,    226,    230, 
236,  239. 

Barrett,  Lawrence,  23. 
Barrett,  Wilson,  69,  90,  96, 

137. 
Barrie,  Sir  J.  M.,  159,  167, 

208,  226,  230-235,  236. 
Batemans,  57. 
Beardsley,  Aubrey,  134,  135, 

150. 

Beau  Austin,  Stevenson  and 
Henley,  138. 

Beaumont  and  Fletcher,  160, 
170. 

Becket,  Tennyson,  28,  57. 

Becque,  141,  211,  212. 

Beerbohm,  Max,  66,  134, 
207;  quoted,  155  ;  on 
Barrie,  233;  on  The  Ad- 
mirable Crichton,  234. 

Beggar's  Opera,  Gay,  9. 

Bell,  J.  J.,  171. 

BeUe  Hdhne,  La,  74. 


Bellew,  Kyrle,  52. 

Bells,        The,       Erokmann- 

Chatrian,  36,  57. 
Belphegor,  Charles  Webb,  35. 
Benefit    of    the    Doubt,    The, 

Jones,  125,  130,  131. 
Bennett,   Arnold,    160,    168, 

208. 
Benson,  F.  R.,  27,  152,  162. 
Bernard,  William  Bayle,  13. 
Bernhardt,  Sarah,  61,  150. 
Bertram,  Maturin,  33. 
Besier,  R.,  236. 
Birmingham  Repertory 

Theatre,  172. 
Bishop's  Move,  The,  Hobbes, 

151. 
Bjomson,  160. 
Blanchard,  E.  L.,  40,  41. 
Blot    in    the    'Scutcheon,    A, 

Browning,  16,  23. 
Blue  Bird,  The,  Maeterlinck, 

168,  199,  233,  236. 
Bohemian    Girl,     The,    bur- 
lesqued by  Gilbert,  72. 
Boucicault,  D.  L.,  11,  13,  36, 

38,  39-40,  68,  231 ;  quoted 

on  translation  of  plays,  7 ; 

on    Shakespeare    staging, 

27 ;   on  new  temper  of  age, 

31. 
Bourgeois,  37. 
Bourgeois  Tragedy,  36. 
Brand,  Ibsen,  139. 
Bravo,  The,  33. 
Breaking   a   Butterfly,   Jones 

and  Herman,  64. 
Brieux,  159,  212. 
Brighouse,  Harold,  170,  171. 
Brisebarre  and  Nus,  40. 
Broken  Hearts,  Gilbert,  75, 

76,  79,  80. 
Brooke,  Gustavus  V.,  27. 
Brough,  William,  11. 


INDEX 


287 


Brougham,  John,  11. 
Browning,  Robert,  2,  15,  18, 

19-25,  192,  226. 
Bruce,  a  Drama,  Davidson, 

146. 
Buchanan,   Robert,  65,   70- 

71,  111,  137. 
Buckstone,  J.  B.,  13,  33,  73. 
Bulwer-Lytton,  Sir  Edward, 

2,  17,  18,  36,  68. 
Bunch  of  Violets,  A,  Grundy, 

88. 
Bunty  Pulls  the  Strings,  Mof- 
fat, 224. 
Burlesque,  9,  10-11. 
Bumand,  F.  C,  11,  40,  41, 

68,  143. 
Business  is  Business,  adapted 

by  Gnindy,  87. 
Butler,    Samuel,    133,    180, 

230. 
Bygones,  Pinero,  110. 
Byron,  Lord  George  Gordon, 

quoted  on  drama,  1. 
Byron,    H.   J.,    11,    15,    41, 

49,  68,  69,  77. 

Cabinet  Minister,  The,  Pinero, 
114,  117. 

CcBsar  and  Cleopatra,  Shaw, 
188,  194,  203. 

Calumny,  from  El  Gran  GaU 
eoto,  136. 

Camelot  Series,  65,  139. 

Camille,  88,  143. 

Candida,  Shaw,  164,  165, 
188,  189,  191-193,  199, 
203,  226. 

Cannan,  Gilbert,  224. 

Captain  Brassbound^s  Con- 
version, Shaw,  159,  165, 
188,  190,  191,  196,  197. 

Captain  Swift,  Chambers, 
150. 


Carlyle,  T.,  on  English 
drama,  1,  7. 

Carr,  J.  Com3nis,  152. 

Carr,  Dr.  Osmond,  85-86. 

Carr6,  M.,  42. 

Carton,  R.  C,  151,  228,  230. 

Case  of  Rebellious  Susan, 
The,  Jones,  92,   104. 

Cashel  Byron's  Profession, 
Shaw,  182. 

Cassilis  Engagement,  The, 
Hankin,  159,  219. 

Casson,  Lewis,  170. 

Caste,  Robertson,  46,  118, 
226. 

Cecil,  Arthur,  52. 

CeUier,  Alfred,  85. 

Cenci,  The,  Shelley,  22. 

Censorship,  5,  92,  134,  142- 
143. 

Chains,  Baker,  160,  167,  224. 

Chambers,  H.,  150,  228,  230. 

Change,  Francis,  172,  224. 

Chapin,  Harold,  171,  224. 

"Character  is  Fate",  Dic- 
tum by  Novalis,  124. 

Charing  Cross  Theatre,  30. 

Charity,  Gilbert,  54,  77. 

Charity  that  Began  at  Home, 
The,  Hankin,  165,  219. 

Charles  I,  WiUs,  57,  70. 

Charles  XII,  Planch6,  33. 

Charrington,  Charles  and  Ja- 
net Achurch,  138. 

Cherry  Orchard,  The,  Tohe- 
khov,  159. 

Chesterton,  G.  K.,  135. 

Child  in  dramatic  Uterature, 
The,  233. 

Christmas  pantomime,  11, 
12,  235. 

Cinematograph  halls,  227. 

Circuits,  theatrical,  6. 

Cloretie,  M.  Jules,  61. 


288 


INDEX 


Clariaaa  Harlowe,  Buchanan, 
71. 

Classifications  of  plays,  115, 
116. 

Claudian,  Wills,  7,  70. 

Clayton,  John,  52. 

Clerical  Error,  A,  Jones,  90. 

Closet  play  explained,  14. 

Coghlan,  C.  F.,  52. 

Coleridge,  S.  T.,  76. 

Colleen  Bawn,  Boucicault,  39. 

Collins,  WilMe,  52,  106. 

Colombe's  Birthday,  Brown- 
ing, 24,  25,  226. 

Comfidie  Frangaise,  60,  61. 

Comgdie  ross6,  120,  121. 

Comedy,  nature  of,  116; 
dominance  of  in  English 
drama,  229. 

Comedy  end  Tragedy,  Gilbert, 
77. 

Comedy  of  Love,  Ibsen,  64. 

Comedy  of  social  groups, 
102. 

Comedy  Theatre,  137. 

Commercial  theatre,  faults 
of,  162. 

Confession  scenes  in  Jones,  95. 

Congreve,  102,  103. 

Conrad,  Joseph,  159. 

Consent,  Le,  74. 

Continental  influence  on 
English  drama,  211. 

Conway,  H.  B.,  52. 

Copyright,  British,  32 ; 
American,  138. 

Coraican  Brothers,  The,  Bouci- 
cault, 34,  36,  57. 

Costume  Society,  The,  66, 
155. 

Cosy  Couple,  The,  from  Feuil- 
let's  Le  Village,  43. 

Cottage  in  the  Air,  The,  Knob- 
lauch, 237. 


Courier  of  Lyons,  The,  Reade, 

36. 
Court  Theatre,  30,  53,  54, 

77,    112,    114;     repertory 

theatre    under    Vedrenne 

and  Barker,  163,  164-165, 

189,  193,  224,  235. 
Cousin  Kate,  Davies,  229. 
Covent  Garden  Theatre,  2, 

3,  6,  16,  19,  34,  236. 
Craig,    Gordon,     135,     146, 

236,  237-240. 
Crawfurd,  Oswald,  155. 
Crime  and  Punishment,  Dos- 

toyevsky,   71. 
Criterion  Theatre,  30,  53,  55, 

112,  137. 
Criticism,  66,  134,  180-181. 
Cromwell,  Hugo,  18,  34. 
Crusaders,    The,  Jones,   102, 

114. 
Cup,  The,  Tennyson,  28,  57. 
"Cup  and  Saucer"  play,  45. 
Curel,  Frangois  de,  160. 
Cynic,  The,  Merivale,  70. 
Cyril's  Success,  Byron,  69. 

Daily  Telegraph,  The,  142. 

Daisy's  Escape,  Pinero,  110. 

Daly,  Augustin,  37. 

Dancing  Girl,  The,  Jones, 
100. 

Dandy  Dick,  Pinero,  114. 

Dan'l  Druce,  Blacksmith,  Gil- 
bert, 77. 

Dark  Lady  of  the  Sonnets, 
The,  Shaw,  194,  202. 

David  Ballard,  McEvoy,  170, 
224. 

David  Oarrick,  Robertson, 
44. 

Davidson,  John,  146. 

Davies,  H.  H.,  229,  230. 

Dean,  Basil,  171. 


INDEX 


289 


Dean's        Daughter,        The, 

Grundy,  89. 
Death     o/     Marlowe,      The, 

Home,  16. 
Deborah,  Mosenthal,  33. 
Debt  of  Honour,  A,  Grundy, 

89. 
Decorator,  The,  a  new  stage 

artist,  236. 
De  Dumas  d  Rostand,  Filon, 

120. 
Degenerates,     The,     Grundy, 

89. 
Delaunay,  M.,  61. 
Delavigne,  Casimir,  34,  57. 
Dennery  and  Clairville,  42. 
Dennery  and  Clement,  42. 
Dennery  and  Foumier,  35. 
Descl6e,  Aim^e,  61. 
Devil's  Disciple,   The,  Shaw, 

165,    188,    190,    195,    196, 

201,   203. 
Devrient,  EmU,  60. 
Dickens,  Charles,  7,  23,  36, 

68 ;  quoted  on  Marie  Wil- 
ton, 49;  quoted  by  Charles 

Kent,  59. 
Diderot,   211. 
Diplomatists,    The,   Grundy, 

87. 
Discussion  plays,  197. 
Distressed  Mother,  The,  15. 
Divided  Way,  The,  Esmond, 

145. 
Divine  Gift,  The,  Jones,  106. 
Doctor's  Dilemma,  The,  Shaw, 

165,    192,    199,   201,   202, 

203. 
Doll's  House,  A;  Ibsen,  64, 

138,  139. 
Dolly      Reforming      Herself, 

Jones,  106. 
Domestic  drama,  9,  39. 
Don,  Besier,  236. 


Don  Cisar  de  Bazan,  34. 
Don    Juan    d'Autriche,  De- 
lavigne, 34. 
Don  Juan  in  Hell  from  Man 

and  Superman,  Shaw,  165. 
Doodle,      Dapperwit,     and 

Froth,  60. 
Dostoyevsky,  71. 
Double  Marriage,  The,  Reade, 

41. 
Drama,    advantages    of    for 

Shaw,  183;    substance  of, 

analyzed,  184-185. 
Drama      at      Home,      The, 

Planche,  6. 
Drama  Society,  The,  160. 
"Dramatic  Renascence  ",  the, 

145. 
Dramatization  of  novels,  68. 
Dream   at  Sea,    The,   Buck- 
stone,  33. 
Dream  of  Eugene  Aram,  The, 

57. 
Dreams,  Robertson,  48. 
Drink,  Reade,  41. 
Drinkwater,  A.  E.,  159. 
Drury  Lane  Theatre,  2,  3, 

7,  13,  15,  16,  18,  23,  41, 

69,  136,  227. 
Duchess  de  la  Vallibre,   TAe, 

Bulwer-Lytton,  16,  18. 
Duchess  of  Padua,  The,  Wilde, 

149. 
Duke  of  Meiningen,  troupe 

of,  62. 
Duke    of    York's    Theatre, 

165^167,  168,  201,  224. 
Dulcamara;     or.    The    Little 

Duck  and  the  Great  Quack, 

Gilbert,  72. 
Dumanoir  and  Dennery,  34. 
Dumas,  A.  pbre,  34,  36,  87. 
Dumas,  A.  fits,  61,  65,  88, 

141, 143. 


290 


INDEX 


Dunsany,  Lord,  237. 
Duse,  Eleanora,  237. 

Early  Victorian  plays  and 
playwrights,  8,  12. 

Ecdesiastes,  quoted  by  Jones, 
95. 

Echegaray,  Jos6,  136. 

Eighteen  Nineties,  The,  Jack- 
son, 133. 

Eldest  Son,  The,  Galsworthy, 
211,  216,  219. 

El  Gran  Galeoto,  Echegaray, 
136. 

Electra,  Murray,  165. 

Eliot,  George,  77,  124. 

Elisir  d'Amore,  L',  bur- 
lesqued by  Gilbert,  72. 

Elizabethan  Stage  Society, 
160-161,  163. 

Ellis,  Havelock,  64,  65. 

Emperor  and  Galilean,  Ibsen, 
64. 

Enemy  of  the  People,  An, 
Ibsen,  65,  66,  139,  154. 

Engaged,  Gilbert,  76,  78. 

English  Dramatists  of  To-day, 
Archer,  66,  68. 

English  Play  Society,  160. 

Erckmann-Chatrian,  36,  57. 

Esmond,  H.  V.,  145,  151, 
228,  230. 

Esther  Waters,  Moore,  160. 

Euripides,  160,  170. 

Everlasting  Mercy,  The,  Mase- 
field,  217. 

Everyman,  160,  162. 

Extravaganza,  11. 

Fabian  Society,  178. 
Faithful,  The,  Masefield,  236. 
Falcon,   The,   Tennyson,   28, 

55. 
Falacappa,  74. 


Fanny's    First    Play,    Shaw, 

168,  200,  202,  230,  236. 
Fantasy,  119-121,  230-236. 
Farce,  9,  112,  113. 
Far  From  the  Madding  Crowd, 

Hardy,  HI. 
Farr,    Miss    Florence,    139, 

169. 
Farren,  Miss  NelUe,  72. 
Fathers  and  Sons,  Turgenev, 

210. 
Faucit,  Helen,  22. 
Faust,  adapted  by  Merivale 

as     The    Cynic,    70 ;      by 

Gilbert  as  Gretchen,  77. 
Faust,  Phillips  and  Carr,  152. 
Favart,  M.,  61. 
Feehter,  Charles,  27,  34,  60. 
Feuillet,  Octave,  42,  88. 
Feval,  M.,  37. 
Fielding,  Henry,  68,  71. 
Figlia    del    Reggimento,    La, 

burlesqued  by  Gilbert,  72. 
Filon,  A.,  quoted,  120,  129, 

230. 
FitzbaU,  Edward,  13,  36,  97. 
Fitzgerald,  Percy,  143. 
Flaubert,  Gustave,  238. 
Fly-leaf,      The,     issued     by 

Charles  Kean,  26. 
Fool's  Paradise,  A,  Grundy, 

88,  89. 
Fool's  Revenge,  The,  Taylor, 

35. 
Foote,  Lydia,  52. 
Foote,  Samuel,  3. 
Ford,  John,  160. 
Foreign  troupes  in  London, 

60. 
Forget- Me-Not,  Merivale,  70. 
Fortnightly    Review,    64,    66, 

142,  157,  161,  188. 
Foundations    of    a    National 

Drama,  Jones,  92. 


INDEX 


291 


Fox,  S.  M.,  224. 
Francis,  J.  O.,  160,  172,  224. 
Fraud  and  its  Victims,  37. 
Freeing  of  the  Theatres,  The, 

2-6. 
Free   Theatres   in   England, 

155-157. 
Freie  Biihne,  155. 
French  influence,  8,  32,  37. 
French  Play  in  London,  The, 

Arnold,  62. 
Frbres   Corses,   Les,   adapted 

by  Boucicault,  36. 
Frocks   and   Frills,    Grundy, 

87. 
Frohman,  Charles,  167,  231  • 

quoted,  166. 
Frou  Frou,  88,  143. 
Fugitive,     The,     Galsworthy, 

216. 
Fun,  edited  by  H.  J.  Byron, 

72. 
Fyfe,  H.,  quoted,  109. 

Gaiety  Theatre,  30,  61,  169- 

171. 
Galsworthy,   John,   99,    155, 

165,    167,  208,    210,    212- 

216,  220,  226,  236 ;  quoted, 

214. 
Garrick  Theatre,  125. 
Gay  Lord  Quex,  The,  I*inero, 

101,  121,  122,  226. 
Genlis,  Mme.  le,  72. 
Genre  sSrieux,  211,  229. 
George,  Mile.,  35. 
German  Theatre  Company, 

160. 
Getting  Married,  Shaw,  165, 

201. 
Ghosts,  Ibsen,  65,  125,  139, 

157. 
Ghosts  and  Gihberings,  Archer, 

142. 


Gilbert,  W.  S.,  40,  52,  68,  71, 

72-86,  101,  110,  119,  121, 

125,  138,  226,  230 ;  quoted 

on  Robertson,  51 ;   quoted 

on  humor,  86. 
Gilbert,  William,  72. 
Glass      of      Fashion,       ThCj 

Grundy,  88,  89. 
Globe  Theatre,  30,  110. 
God  and  the  Man,  Buchanan, 

71. 
Gods  of  the  Mountain,   The, 

Dunsany,  237. 
Goethe,  quoted,  62,  144. 
Gogol,  160. 
Golden  Fleece,   The,  Planchfi, 

11. 
Goldsmith,    68,     110,     160, 

170. 
Gondoliers,     The;      or.     The 

King  of  Barataria,  Gilbert, 

15. 
Gorky,  159. 
Gosse,  E.,  64. 
Got,  M.,  61. 
Grand    Duke,    The,    Gilbert, 

86. 
Great  Catherine,   The,  Shaw, 

194. 
Great     Divorce     Case,    The, 

112. 
Great  War,  The,  225. 
Greatest      of      These,      The, 

Grundy,  89,  145. 
Gregory,  Lady,  174. 
Green,  Mrs.  J.  R.,  157. 
Greet,  Ben,  161. 
Grein,   John   T.,    138,    156- 

158,  188. 
Gretchen,  Gilbert,  75,  77. 
Grierson's  Way,  Esmond,  151. 
Grundy,  Sydney,  68,  71,  86- 

89,    124,    137,    138,    141, 

145. 


292 


INDEX 


Hal6vy,  141. 

Hamlet,  57,  58;    Ist  quarto, 

160,  161. 
Handel,  239. 
Hankin,  St.  John,  159,  165, 

210,  218-219,  230. 
Hannele,  Hauptmann,  154. 
Hannetons,  Les,  Brienx,  159. 
Hansel  and  Gretel,  154. 
Happy   Land,    The,   Gilbert, 

80. 
Harbour    Lights,    The,    Sims 

and  Pettitt,  69. 
Hard  Struggle,  A,  Marston, 

19. 
Hardy,   Thomas,    111,    157; 

quoted,  244. 
Hare,  John,  44,  52,  53,  54, 

55,  58,  110,  125;    quoted 

on  Robertson,  51. 
Harliquinade,  12,  235. 
Harold,  Tennyson,  28. 
Harris,  Augustus,  53,  137. 
Harris,  Frank,  66,  157. 
Harrison,  Frederick,  137, 228. 
Hauptmann,  Gerhart,  160. 
Haymarket  Theatre,   3,   30, 

44, 53, 54, 65, 69, 73, 78, 87, 

100,    110,    111,    137,    149, 

165,  166,  168,  188,  224. 
Hazlitt,  Wm.,  quoted,  26. 
Hedda  Gabler,  Ibsen,  139. 
Heijermanns,  160. 
Helena^s    Path,     Hope    and 

Lennox,  167. 
Henderson,  Alexander,  112. 
Henderson,  Isaac,  151. 
Hennequin     and     Dolaeour, 

69. 
Henry  III,  Dumas,  phre,  34. 
Herbert,  Miss,  72. 
Herman,  Henry,  90,  96,  137. 
Hernani,  Hugo,  34. 
Herod,  Phillips,  152. 


Hero  of  Romance,  A,  Mars- 
ton,  43. 

Hervieu,  Paul,  212. 

Hester's  Mystery,  Knero,  110. 

Hewlett,  Maurice,  165. 

High  comedy,  early  Vio- 
torian,  9. 

Hindle  Wakes,  Houghton, 
170,  211,  216,  219. 

Hippolytus,  Murray,  165. 

His  Excellency,  Gilbert,  85. 

His  House  in  Order,  Pinero, 
101,  131. 

His  Majesty's  Theatre,  137. 

Historical  Comedy,  118. 

H.  M.  S.  Pinafore;  or. 
The  Lass  that  Loved  a 
Sailor,  82. 

Hobbes,  John  Oliver  (Mrs. 
Craigie),  151. 

Hobby  Horse,  The,  Pinero, 
55,  114,  117. 

Holbom  Theatre,  30. 

HoUingshead,  Mr.,  manages 
French  tour,  61. 

HoUingsworth,  Mr.,  man- 
ager of  melodrama,  53. 

Home,  Robertson,  48. 

Home  Secretary,  The,  Carton, 
151. 

Hood,  Tom,  46,  80. 

Hoodman  Blind,  Jones,  98. 

Hooligan,  The,  Gilbert,  73. 

Hope,  Anthony,  and  Cosmo 
Gordon  Lennox,  167. 

Home,  R.  H.,  16;  quoted  on 
Virginius,   17. 

Horniman,  Miss  A.  E.  F., 
169-171,    173. 

Houghton,  Stanley,  160,  170, 
200,  219-220. 

"House-in-order"  play,  101. 

Housman  and  Barker,  Pru- 
nella, 165,  167,  223,  235. 


INDEX 


293 


How  he  Lied  to  Her  Husband, 

Shaw,  178,  200. 
Hugo,  Victor,  18,  34,  35,  37. 
Hypocrites,  The,  Jones,  101, 

106. 

Ibsen    in    England,    64-67, 

93,     130,     136,     138-142, 

164,    186,    189,    192,   208, 

211,  233. 
Ibsen's  Ghost,  Barrie,  233. 
Ideal   Husband,    An,   Wilde, 

148,  149. 
Ideal,  The,  as  substance  of 

drama,  184. 
Importance  of  Being  Earnest, 

Wilde,  149. 
Impressions    and     Opinions, 

Moore,  156. 
In  a  Balcony,  Browning,  24. 
In  Chancery,  Pinero,  114. 
Incorporated   Stage  Society, 

158-160,  163,  171. 
Independence,  Pinero,  114. 
Independent     Theatre,     65, 

138, 139, 142, 156-158, 188. 
In  Honour  Bound,  Grundy, 

87,  124. 
Interieur,    U,    Maeterlinck, 

158. 
Intruder,    The,  Maeterlinck, 

138,  158. 
lolanthe;    or.   The  Peer  and 

the  Pen,  Gilbert,  83. 
Ion,  Talfourd,  15,  19. 
Ins,  Pinero,   125,   126,  131, 

132. 
Irish  Essays,  Arnold,  62. 
Irish  National  Theatre,  169, 

173-175. 
Ironmaster,  The,  Pinero,  55, 

111. 
Irrational  Knot,  The,  Shaw, 

182. 


Irving,   Sir   Henry,   27,   36, 

53,  56-59,  67,  110,  137. 
Ivy  Hall,  Oxenford,  43. 

Jackson,  Holbrook,  133. 

Jack  Straw,  Maugham,  229. 

Jacob  and  Esau,  160. 

James,  David,  52. 

Jane  Eyre,  Wills,  70. 

Japanese  influence,  236. 

Jerrold,  Douglas,  7,  12,  40; 
quoted  on  Browning,  20. 

Joan  of  Arc,  Taylor,  40. 

Jones,  H.  A.,  55,  64,  68,  69, 
77,  88,  91-107,  108,  114, 
130,  132,  134,  137,  138, 
140,  141,  145,  157,  213, 
216,226,228,230;  quoted, 
54. 

John  a'  Dreams,  Chambers, 
151. 

John  Bull's  Other  Island, 
Shaw,  165,  199-200. 

John  Glayde's  Honour,  Sutro, 
228. 

Jonathan  Bradford;  or.  The 
Murder  at  the  Roadside 
Inn,  Fitzball,  42,  97. 

Jonson,  Ben,  160,  170. 

Joseph  Entangled,  Jones,  106. 

Joseph's  Sweetheart,  Bu- 
chanan, 71. 

Journal  of  a  London  Play- 
goer,  Morley,  60. 

Journal  of  Dramatic  Reform, 
66. 

Journeys  end  in  Lovers'  Meet- 
ing, Hobbes  and  Moore, 
151. 

Joy,  Galsworthy,  165,  215. 

Juana,  Wills,  70. 

Judah,  Jones,  90,  99,  103. 

Justice,  Galsworthy,  167, 214, 
21&-216. 


294 


INDEX 


Kammersdnger,    Der,    Wede- 

kind,  159. 
Kean,  Charles,  6,  24,  25,  59. 
Kemble's  King  John,  13,  26. 
Kendal,  Mrs.   (Madge  Rob- 
ertson), 50,  52,  66,  110. 
Kendal,  Mr.  and  Mrs.,  53, 

54,  55,  87,  137. 
Kent,  Charles,  59. 
King's  Rival,  A,  Taylor  and 

Reade,  35,  40. 
King  Victor  and  King  Charles, 

Browning,  23. 
Kipling,  233. 
Kismet,  Knoblauch,  237. 
Kiss,     The,     Theodore     de 

Banville,  157. 
Knoblauch,  Edward,  237. 
Knowles,  James  Sheridan,  7, 

16,  17. 
Kotzebue,  111. 

Labiehe,  42,  87.  112. 

Labrousse,  34. 

Ladies'    Battle,   The,    Reade, 

41. 
Lady  Bountiful,  Pinero,  120. 
Lady  Clare,  Buchanan,  71. 
Lady    Frederick,    Maugham, 

229. 
Lady    from    the    Sea,     The, 

Ibsen,  139,  159. 
Lady     Gorringe's     Necklace, 

Davies,   229. 
Lady  of  Lyons,  The,  Bulwer- 

Lytton,  16,  18. 
Lady  Patricia,  Besier,  237. 
Lady      Windermere's      Fan, 

Wilde,  148,  149. 
Land  of  Heart's  Desire,  The, 

Yeats,  226. 
Land     of      Promise,      The, 

Maugham,  229. 
Land  Reform  Union,  179. 


Last  of  the  DeMullins,   The, 

Hankin,  211,  219. 
Lea,  Miss  Marion,  139. 
League  of  Youth,  The,   Ibsen, 

159. 
Leaves    from    a    Dramatist's 

Diary,  Boueieault,  39. 
Lee,  Sidney,  162. 
Legend     of     Leonora,     The, 

Barrie,  235. 
Legouvfi,  34. 
Leigh,  J.  H.,  163. 
Leighton,  Dorothy,  158. 
Lemaitre,  Fr6d6rick,  34,  35. 
Lemon,  Mark,  13,  40. 
Letty,  Pinero,  117,  119. 
Lewes,  G.  H.,  59. 
Liars,  The,  Jones,  105. 
"Life  Force",  The,  180,  192, 

203. 
Life's  Ransom,  A,  Marston, 

19. 
Lights  o'  London,  The,  Sims, 

37,  69,  97. 
LiUo,  36. 

Lincoln's  Inn  Fields,  9. 
Little     Dream,     The,     Gals- 
worthy, 216,  233,  234,  236. 
Little  Theatre,  The,  168. 
Liverpool  Repertory  Theatre, 

171. 
London     Assurance,     Bouei- 
eault, 13,  39,  52. 
London  Life,  37. 
London  melodrama,  37. 
Lord,  Miss  H.  F.,  64. 
Lord  and  Lady  Algy,  Carton, 

151. 
Lord    of    the    Manor,     The, 

Merivale,  70. 
Lords  and  Commons,  Pinero, 

111. 
Louis    XI,    Delavigne,    34, 

57. 


INDEX 


295 


Louis  XIV,  Labrousse,  34, 
Love  Among  the  Artists,  Shaw, 

182. 
Lower  Depths,  The,  159. 
Low  Water,  Pinero,  111. 
Lugne-Poe,  M.,  158. 
Luria,  Browning,  25. 
Lyceum  Theatre,  28,  57,  66, 

70,  73,  77,  110,  163. 
Lyons  Mail,  The,  36,  57. 
Lytton,  Edward  Bulwer-.  See 

Bulwer-Lytton. 
Lytton,  Marie,  77. 

Macbeth,  57. 

McEvoy,  Charles,  170,  224. 
McLeod,  Fiona,  160. 
Macready,  W.  C,  2,  6,  15, 

19,  22,  23,  25. 
Madame  U Archiduc,  74. 
Madras  House,  The,  Barker, 

167,  198,  222-223. 
Maeterlinck,  M.,    138,    146, 

150,  165,  199,  233,  236. 
Magazines  and  Drama,  66. 
Magistrate,  The,  Pinero,  114. 
Maison  neuve,  Sardou,  111. 
Mattre  de  Forges,  Le,  Ohnet, 

71,  111. 

Major  Barbara,   Shaw,    165, 

200,  202. 
Mammon,  Grundy,  100. 
Man  and  Superman,   Shaw, 

165,    189,    192,   196,   197- 

199,  203,  226. 
Man  and  Wife,  ColUns,  52. 
Manchester  Repertory  Thea- 
tre, 169-171,  224. 
Man   from    Blankleys,    The, 

Anstey,  151. 
Man  of  Destiny,  The,  Shaw, 

165,  188,  193, 
Man  of  Honour,  A,  Maugham, 

159. 


Mannen  af  Bord  och  Qvinnan 

af  Folket,  Schwartz,  111. 
Manners     as     substance    of 

plays,  184. 
Manoeuvres    of    Jane,     The, 

Jones,  105, 
Mansfield,  Richard,  189,  193. 
Maquet,  M.,  41, 
Mariage        d'Olympe,        Le, 

Augier,  127. 
Marie  de  Meranie,  Marston, 

19. 
Marino    Faliero,    Delavigue, 

34. 
Marlowe,  C,  160. 
Marrying  of  Anne  Leete,  The, 

Barker,  221,  226. 
Marston,   J,   Westland,    18- 

19,68, 
Martyn,  Edward,  174. 
Marylebone  Gardens,  4,  10. 
Masefield,    John,    165,    216- 

218,  226,  236;    quoted  on 

tragedy,  217. 
Mask,  The,  240. 
Masks  and  Faces,  Taylor  and 

Reade,  40,  41,  52, 
Masque  of  Love,  The,  Purcell, 

239. 
Masqueraders,     The,     Jones, 

103,  105,  226. 
Master  Builder,   The,  Ibsen, 

139,  158, 
Mathews,  Charles,  161. 
Matin6es,  155. 
Maude,  Cyril,  137,  188,  194. 
Maugham,     Somerset,     159, 

228,  229,  230. 
Maupassant,  144. 
Mausoleum    of    Ibsen,     The, 

Archer,  142. 
May  fair,  Pinero,  55,  111. 
Medea,  Murray,  165. 
Medea  in  Corinth,  Wills,  70. 


296 


INDEX 


Meilhac  and  Hal^vy,  74,  88. 
Melodrama,  8,  33,  36,  68,  70, 

96. 
Merchant  of  Venice,  The,  57. 
Meredith,  Geoi^e,  157,  167, 

208,  230,  231. 
Merivale,  H.  C,  68. 
Merritt,  Paul,  37,  68. 
Merritt,    P.,     and    Pettitt, 

Henry,  69. 
Merry  Zingara,  Gilbert,  72. 
Michael  and  his  Lost  Angel, 

Jones,  96,  101,  105,  145. 
Mid-Channel,     Pinero,     125, 

131-132,  216. 
Middleman,  The,  Jones,  98. 
Middleton,  160. 
Midsummer   Night's    Dream, 

82. 
Mikado,  The;   or.  The  Town 

of  Titipu,  Gilbert,  82,  84. 
Milestones,  Bennett,  168, 211. 
Milton,  John,  160. 
" Mind  the  Paint"  Girl,  The, 

Pinero,  123. 
Minor  theatres,  4. 
Minority  theatres,  134,  135, 

144,  167,  205-207. 
Miracle,  The,  236. 
Mirbeau,  Octave,  87. 
Misalliance,  Shaw,  167,  201. 
Mis4rables,    Les,    Hugo,    37, 

97. 
Miss  Tomboy,  Buchanan,  71. 
Moh,  The,  Galsworthy,  214, 

216. 
Modjeska,  Mme.,  50,  70. 
Moffat,  G.,  224. 
MoliSre,  160,  176,  184. 
Mollusc,  The,  Davies,  229. 
"Monday  Nights",  138,  154. 
Money  Spinner,  The,  Pinero, 

55,  110. 
Monichouse,  Allen,  171. 


Monopoly  theatres,  2,  3,  5. 
Monro,  Neil,  171. 
Monster  Play,  The,  35. 
Monte  Crista,  34,  60,  97. 
Montjoye,  Feuillet,  88. 
Moore,    George,    138,    156, 

157,  159,  174. 
Morality  Play  Society,  The, 

160. 
More  Bab  Ballads,  Gilbert, 

72. 
Morley,  Henry,  59. 
Morris,  WiUiam,  134,  158. 
Morton,  J.  Maddison,  13. 
Mosenthal,  33. 
Moser,  von,  112. 
Mountebank,  The,  35. 
Mountebanks,    The,    Gilbert, 

85,86. 
M.  P.,  Robertson,  48. 
Mrs.  Dane's  Defence,  Jones, 

106,  130. 
Mrs.  Dot,  Maugham,  229. 
Mrs.     Warren's     Profession^ 

Shaw,  188,  189,  190. 
Much  Ado  About  Nothing,  57. 
Mummy   and   the   Humming 

Bird,  The,  Henderson,  151. 
Murray,  Gilbert,  159,  165. 
Music  halls,  227. 
Musset,  28. 
Mystbres  de  Londres,  F6val, 

37. 
Mysteries  of  Paris,  Sue,  36. 

National    theatre,    a,     134( 

161-162. 
Nero,  Phillips,  152. 
Nethersole,  Olga,  125. 
New  Magdalen,  The,  Collins, 

106. 
New    Men    and    Old    Acres, 

Taylor  and  Dubourg,  64. 
New  R&new,  The,  92. 


INDEX 


297 


Nineteenth  Century,  The,  62, 

92. 
Nineties,  The  movements  of 

the,  133-153. 
Noble  Vagabond,  The,  Jones, 

98. 
Nora,  translation  of  A  DolVs 

House,  by  Miss  Lord,  64. 
Notorious     Mrs.      Ebbsmith, 

The,  Pinero,  125,  129,  130. 
Noire  Dame  de  Paris,  Bour- 
geois, 37. 
Novalis,  124. 
Novelists     as     playwrights, 

207-208. 

Octoroon,     The,    Boucicault, 

40. 
Odd    Man    Out,    The,    Brig- 
house,  170. 
Offenbach  operas,  74. 
Ohnet,  Geoi^e,  71,  111. 
Old  Friends,  Barrie,  167,  235. 
Old  Heads  and  Young  Hearts, 

Boucicault,  39. 
Olivia,  WiUs,  70. 
Olympic  Theatre,  4,  72. 
On    Actors    and    the    Art    of 

Acting,  Lewes,  60. 
Oncomers  Society,  160. 
One  Day  More,  Conrad,  159. 
Only  Bound  the  Corner,  Jones, 

90. 
Op^ra  Comique,  30,  60,  82. 
Organization  of  the  theatre, 

the  new,  154-175. 
Oriana,  Albery,  11,  69. 
Oriental  motives,  236. 
Oscar,  ou  le  mari  qui  trompe 

sa  femme.  Scribe  and  Du- 

vergne,  87. 
Othello,  51. 
Our  Boys,  Byron,  69. 
Ours,  Robertson,  45. 


Ouicast,  Davies,  229. 
Overland  Route,  The,  Taylor, 

40. 
Oxenford,  John,  13,  43. 
Oxford  Dramatic  Society,  66. 

Paillasse,  Deimery  and  Poup- 

nier,  35. 
Pair  of  Spectacles,  A,  Grundy, 

87. 
Palace   of    Truth,    The,    Gil- 
bert, 72,  76,  79. 
Palais     de     la     Viriti,     Le, 

Genlis,  72. 
Pall  Mall  Gazette,  The,  142, 

157. 
Pantaloon,  Barrie,  235. 
Pantomime,    Christmas,    11, 

12,  235 ;  prologue  on  pan- 
tomime, 146. 
Paolo  and  Francesca,  Phillips, 

152,  153. 
Parisienne,  La,  Becque,  141. 
Parliamentary      Committee, 

report    on    state    of    the 

theatre,  7. 
Passers-by,  Chambers,  151. 
Patent  theatres,  2  fif. 
Pater,  Walter,  quoted,  74. 
Patience;      or,     Bunthome'a 

Bride,  Gilbert,  83,  84. 
Patrician's     Daughter,     The, 

Marston,  18,  19. 
Pauvres  de  Paris,  Les,  adapted, 

37. 
Payne,  Mr.  B.  Iden,  170. 
Peer  Gynt,  Ibsen,  64. 
PellSas  et  Milisande,  Maeter- 

Unck,  158. 
Perrin,  M.,  61. 
Peter  Pan,  Barrie,  226,  233, 

236. 
Petits  Oiseaux,  Les,  Labiche 

and  Delacour,  87. 


298 


INDEX 


Pettitt,  Henry,  37. 

Phelps,  Samuel,  6,  23,  26. 

Philanderer,  The,  Shaw,  165, 
188,  189,  190. 

Philip  van  Artevelde,  Sir 
Henry  Taylor,  16. 

Phillips,  Stephen,  137,  138, 
151-153. 

Pietro  of  Siena,  Phillips,  152. 

Pigeon,  The,  Galsworthy, 
216,  236,  237. 

Pilgrim's  Scrip,  The,  Mere- 
dith, quoted  from,  95. 

Pillars  of  Society,  Ibsen,  64, 
98,  138,  139,  159. 

Pinero,  Sir  Arthur  Wing,  52, 
53,  68,  88,  101,  108-132, 
137,  138,  141,  157,  167, 
176,  213,  216,  222,  226, 
228,  230. 

Pink  Dominoes,  Albery,  69, 
112,  143. 

Pippa  Passes,  Browning,  25. 

Pirates  of  Penzance,  The;  or. 
The  Slave  of  Duty,  Gilbert, 
82,  196. 

Planch^,  J.  R.,  6,  11,  12, 
13,  26. 

Play  Actors,  The,  160. 

Play  of  Ideas,  The,  123. 

Play,  Robertson,  47. 

Playgoers  Club,  The,  92. 

Playgoers,  The,  Pinero,  123. 

Playhouse,  The,  224. 

Plays  for  "Free"  theatres, 
206. 

Plays  for  Puritans,  Shaw, 
189. 

Plays  Pleasant  and  Unpleas- 
ant, Shaw,  189. 

Plot  and  Passion,  Taylor,  40. 

Poel,  WiUiam,  160-161. 

Poudre  aux  Yeux,  La,  La- 
biche,  87. 


Power  of  Darkness,  The,  Tol- 
stoi, 159. 

Preserving  Mr.  Panmure, 
Pinero,  123. 

Press  Cuttings,  Shaw,  202. 

Prince  of  Wales's  Theatre, 
41,  46,  48,  49,  50-53,  77, 

Princess  and  the  Butterfly, 
The,  Pinero,  120,  121. 

Princess  Ida;  or.  Castle  Ada- 
mant, Gilbert,  84. 

Princess,  The,  Tennyson,  72, 
84. 

Princess's  Theatre,  6,  26,  96. 

Printing  of  plays,  138,  139. 

Prisoner  of  Zenda,  The,  Hope, 
146. 

Professor's  Love  Story,  The, 
Barrie,  233. 

Profligate,  The,  Pinero,  55, 
87,  112,  114,  123-127. 

Promise  of  May,  The,  Tenny- 
son, 28. 

Prunella,  Housman  and 
Barker,  165,  167,  223,  235. 

PubUcation  of  plays,  138, 
139,  177. 

Puck  of  Pook's  Hill,  Kipling, 
233. 

Punch,  41,  72. 

Puppets,  theory  of,  238. 

Pureell,  239. 

Pygmalion  and  Galatea,  Gil- 
bert, 54,  76,  79. 

Pygmalion,  Shaw,  199,  203. 

Quality  Street,  Barrie,  234. 
Quarterly  Review,  quoted,  5. 
Queen  Mary,  Tennyson,  28, 

57. 
Queen's  Theatre,  30,  72,  165. 

Raleigh,  Cecil,  157. 

Bates  and  Taxes,  Christmas 


INDEX 


299 


Annual  edited  by  Tom 
Hood,  46. 

Ray,  Miss,  64. 

Reade,  Charles,  36,  40,  68. 

Reality  as  substance  of  a 
play,  184. 

Rector,  The,  Pinero,  111. 

Reinhardt,  Max,  236,  239. 

Relapse,  The,  Vanbrugh,  71. 

Renascence  of  the  English 
Drama,  The,  Jones,  92. 

Repentance,  A,  Hobbes,  151. 

Repertory  Theatre  Associa- 
tion, The,  172. 

Repertory  Theatre,  the,  162, 
167, 168,  172 ;  in  the  prov- 
inces, 168-175 ;  influence 
on  popular  drama,  227. 

Return  of  the  Druses,  The, 
Browning,  23. 

Return  of  the  Prodigal,  The, 
Hankin,  165. 

Revelations  of  London,  37. 

Rewards  and  Fairies,  Kip- 
ling, 233. 

Richard  III,  57. 

Richelieu,  Bulwei^Lytton,  16, 
18,  57. 

Richepin,  M.,  151. 

"Right  to  life"  motive  in 
plays,  100,  201-202. 

Rigoletto,  35. 

Riquet  with  the  Tuft,  Planoh6, 
11. 

Ristori,  Mme.,  61. 

Rivals,  The,  52,  54,  162. 

Robert  Macaire,  Selby,  34. 

Robertson,  Sir  J.  Forbes,  125, 
194. 

Robert  the  Devil,  burlesqued 
by  GUbert,  72. 

Robertson,  Madge.  See  Ken- 
dal, Mrs. 

Robertson,  Thomas  WiUiam, 


42-48,   51,   68,    117,    118, 

119,  226 ;  quoted  on  state 

of  actresses,  7. 
Robertson,      T.      W.,      the 

yoimger,  137. 
Robins,  Elizabeth,  139. 
Rocket,  The,  Pinero,  113. 
Rogue's  Comedy,  The,  Jones, 

103. 
Roi  s' amuse,  Le,  Hugo,  35. 
Romantic  plays,  8. 
Romantic   tradition,   decline 

of,  14-29. 
Romeo  and  Juliet,  57. 
Rorke,  Kate,  125. 
Rosencranz  and  Guildenstern, 

Gilbert,  77. 
Rosmersholm,  Ibsen,  125, 139, 

178. 
Rostand,  Edmond,  152,  235. 
Rothenstein,  A.,  236. 
Royalty  Theatre,  168. 
Ruddigore;    or.   The  Witches 

Curse,  Gilbert,  85. 
Ruskin,  John,  7,  134. 
Russian  Ballet,  236. 
Rutherford  and  Son,  Sowerby, 

211,  224. 
Ruy  Bias,  34. 

Sadler's  Wells  Theatre,  23, 

26. 
St.  James's  Theatre,  35,  53, 

54,  55,  72,  110,  149. 
Saints    and    Sinners,    Jones, 

90,  92,  96,  97,  101,  140. 
Sakuntala,  160. 
Salome,  Wilde,  150. 
Sarcey,  M.,  141. 
Sardou,  Victorien,  111,  141. 
Saturday    Review,     The,    66, 

155,  181. 
Savoy  Theatre,  30,  83,  137, 

16&-166. 


300 


INDEX 


Scaramouch  in  Naxos,  David- 
son, 146. 

Schiller,  160. 

"Schimpflexikon"  of  abuse 
on  Ibsen,  Archer,  142. 

Schnitzler,  160,  223. 

School  for  Scandal,  52,  54. 

Schoolmistress,  The,  Pinero, 
114. 

School  of  Dramatic  Art,  A,  66. 

School,  Robertson,  47. 

Schwartz,  Marie  Sophie,  111. 

Scots'  Observer,  The,  181. 

Scott,  Clement,  65,  141 ; 
quoted,  46,  52,  142. 

Scott,  Sir  Walter,  drama- 
tization  of,   68. 

Scottish  Repertory  Theatre, 
171. 

Scribe  and  Duvergne,  87. 

Scribe  and  Legouv6,  42,  87. 

Scribe,  E.,  37,  42,  88,  124. 

Second  Mrs.  Tanqueray,  The, 
Pinero,  88,  123,  125,  127- 
129,  131,  132. 

Selby,  Charles,  34. 

Sensation  dramas,  39. 

Sentimental  oomedy,  117, 
118. 

Sentimentalists,  The,  Esmond, 
151. 

Sentimentalists,  The,  Mere- 
dith, 167. 

Serious  drama,  limitations 
of,  115,  116. 

Sex  in  modem  drama,  100. 

Shakespeare,  14,  27,  160, 
163,  170,  176,  184,  195. 

Shakespeare  Festival,  An- 
nual, 155. 

Shakespeare  Memorial  Thea- 
tre at  Stratford,  161,  162. 

Shakespeare  Reading  Society, 
160. 


Sharp,  R,,  Farquharson,  65. 

Sharp,  William,  135,  146; 
quoted,  135. 

Shaugraun,  The,  Boucicault, 
40. 

Shaw,  George  Bernard,  58, 
65,  66,  79,  135,  138,  155, 
157,  159,  164,  165,  167, 
168,  169,  176-204,  207, 
213,  220,  226,  230,  236; 
Shaw  and  Revolt,  177- 
178 ;  Shaw's  test  of  truth, 
177 ;   Shaw's  wit,  187. 

SheUey,  22. 

Sheridan,  170,  176. 

She  Stoops  to  Conquer,  110. 

Shewing-up  of  Blanco  Posnet, 
The,  Shaw,  190,  196,  199, 
201,  202,  204. 

Sign  of  the  Cross,  The,  Bar- 
rett, 69,  146. 

Silas  Marner,  77. 

Silver  Box,  The,  Galsworthy, 
165,  214r-215,  226. 

Silver  King,  The,  Jones  and 
Herman,  69,  90,  96,  97. 

Simpson,  J.  Palgrave,  11, 
72-73. 

Sims  and  Pettitt,  69. 

Sims,  George  R.,  37,  68, 
69,  86,  137,  157. 

Sin  of  David,  The,  Phillips, 
152,  153. 

Sixth  Commandment,  The, 
Buchanan,  71. 

Sleeping  Beauty,  The, 
Planchg,  11. 

Smith,  a  Tragic  Farce,  David- 
son, 146. 

Snowball,  The,  Grundy,  87. 

Social  aspects  of  the  theatre, 
62,  63,  91,  134. 

Social  Democratic  Federa- 
tion, 178. 


INDEX 


301 


Social  motive  in  plays  out- 
worn, 209. 

Society,    Robertson,   44,   45, 
56,  118. 

Society  dramas,  39. 

Sophia,  Buchanan,  71. 

Sophisticated  comedy,  121. 

Sorcerer,  The,  Gilbert,  81,  82. 

SouVs    Tragedy,    A,   Brown- 
ing, 25. 

Sowerby,  Qitha,  224. 

Sowing   the    Wind,    Grundy, 
89,  137. 

Squire,  The,  Pinero,  55,  110, 
111. 

Star,  The,  181. 

State  and  the  Theatre,  The, 
62,  63,  91,  92,  134. 

Stevenson  and  Henley,  138. 

Still  Waiers  Run  Deep,  Tay- 
lor, 40. 

Stockport  Garrick  Society,  60. 

Storm  Beaten,  Buchanan,  71. 

Strafford,  Browning,   16,  19, 
22,  23,  226. 

Strand  Theatre,  41. 

Stranger,  The,  Kotzebue,  111. 

Strathmore,  Marston,  19. 

Streets  of  London,  The,  37. 

Strife,  Galsworthy,  99,   155, 
165,  214,  215. 

Strike    at    Arlingford,     The, 
Moore,  157,  174. 

Strindberg,  160. 

Substance  of  plays  classified, 
184. 

Sudermann,  160. 

Sullivan,  Sir  Arthur,  81. 

Sumunm,  236. 

Surrey  Gardens,  4. 

Sutro,  Alfred,  228. 

Swanborough,  Miss,  49. 

Sweet  Lavender,  Pinero,  114, 
118. 


Sweethearts,  Gilbert,  75,  77. 
Symons,  Arthur,  71,  157. 
Synge,  J.  M.,  135,  174,  226. 

Taken  from  Life,  97. 

Tale  of  Mystery,  A,  Holcraft, 

33. 
Tale     of     Two     Cities,     A, 

Dickens,  70. 
Talfourd,  PYancis,  11. 
Talfourd,  Thomas  Noon,  19. 
Talking  characters,  185. 
Tante,  Chambers,  151. 
Taylor  and  Dubourg,  54. 
Taylor,  Sir  Henry,  16. 
Taylor,  Tom,  35,  40. 
Tchekhov,  159,  199,  221. 
Technique   of  recent  plays, 

209. 
Tempter,  The,  Jones,  101. 
Tennyson,  Alfred,  Lord,  19, 

27-29,  55,  57,  72,  84. 
Terriss,  William,  52. 
Terry,  Edward,  112,  113. 
Terry,  EUen,  50,  52,  57,  193, 

197. 
Thackeray,  W.  M.,  7,  8,  12, 

43,  46,  68,  117. 
Theatre  building,  increase  in, 

30. 
Theatre  Historique,  60. 
Theatre  Libre,  155,  156,  174. 
The  Theatre,  66,  141. 
Th&rhse  Raquin,  Zola,  157. 
Thespis;    or.   The  Gods  from 

Old,  Gilbert,  81. 
Thunderbolt,  The,  Pinero,  122, 

132,  222,  226. 
Thyrza     Fleming,     Dorothy 

Leighton,  158. 
Ticket    of   Leave   Man,   The, 

Taylor,  40. 
Times,  The,  Pinero,  118. 
Times,  The,  London,  142. 


302 


INDEX 


Tolstoi,  136,  138,  159. 

Tom  Cobb,  Gilbert,  78. 

Tomline,  F.  L.,  pseudonym 
of  Gilbert,  73. 

Toole,  J.  L.,  72. 

Topsy-turvydom,  Gilbert,  75. 

Toynbee,  Arnold,  134. 

Trafalgar  Square  Theatre, 
139. 

Tragedy,  116,  117,  124;  de- 
fined by  Masefleld,  217. 

Tragedy  of  Nan,  The,  Mase- 
fleld, 165,  217,  218,  226. 

Traill,  H.  D.,  quoted,  133. 

Tree  of  Knowledge,  The,  Car- 
ton, 151. 

Tree,  Sir  Herbert  Beerbohm, 
53,  65,  66,  100,  137,  138, 
149,  152,  154,  158,  172, 
228. 

Trelawney  of  the  "Wells", 
Pinero,  12,  118,  167,  226. 

Trench,  H.,  168. 

Trial  by  Jury,  Gilbert,  73, 
81,  82. 

Trilby,  146. 

Triumph  of  the  Philistines, 
The,  Jones,  95,  102. 

Trojan  Women,  The,  Murray, 
165. 

Truth,  141,  142. 

Turgenev,  210,  212. 

Twelfth  Night,  195. 

Twelve  Pound  Look,  The, 
Barrie,  167,  235. 

ITwixt  Axe  and  Crown,  Tay- 
lor, 40. 

Two  Hundred  a  Year,  Pinero, 
110. 

Two  Loves  and  a  Life,  Taylor 
and  Reade,  40. 

Two  Mr.  Wetherbys,  The, 
Hankin,  159,  219. 

Two  Roses,  Albery,  56,  69. 


Tyranny     of     Tears,      The, 
Chambers,  151. 

Ueber-marionette,  239. 
Ulysses,  Phillips,  152. 
Under  the  Gaslight,  Daly,  37. 
Under  the  Red  Robe,  146. 
Unearned  increment  of  fame, 

the,  193. 
Une  Chdine,  Scribe,  124. 
Unequal  Match,  The,  Taylor, 

40. 
Unhappy  endings   of  plays, 

88,  98,  100,  102,  112,  125- 

126,  132. 
Unsocial  Socialist,  The,  Shaw, 

182. 
Utopia,     Limited;      or.     The 

Flowers   of   Progress,    Gil- 
bert, 85. 

Vanbrugh,  71. 

VaudeviUe  Theatre,  30,  97. 

Vauxhall,  4. 

Vedrenne  and  Barker,  164- 

166,  189. 
Vedrenne  and  Eadie,  168. 
Vedrenne,  Mr.,  163. 
Vera;       or,     The    Nihilists, 

Wilde,  149. 
Verse  plays,  8. 
Vicarage,     The,     a    Fireside 

Story,  43. 
Victoria,  Queen,  2,  7,  225. 
Victoria  Theatre,  69. 
Visit,  A,  Brandes,  157. 
Vistas,  Sharp,  146. 
Vivandikre,  La,  Gilbert,  72. 
Voysey      Inheritance,       The, 

Barker,  165,  211,  222. 

Walden,   Lord    Howard   de, 

172. 
Walkley,    A.    B.,    65,    157; 

quoted,  188. 


INDEX 


303 


Waller,  Lewis,  125,  149. 
Walls  of  Jericho,  The,  Sutro, 

228. 
War,  Robertson,  48. 
Waring,  Herbert,  139. 
War  of  the  critics,  65,  140. 
Waste,  Barker,  159,  222. 
Way  of  All  Flesh,  The,  Butler, 

133. 
Way  of  the  World,  The,  Con- 

greve,  103. 
Weaker  Sex,  The,  Pinero,  112. 
Wealth,  Jones,  98-99. 
Webb,  Charles,  35. 
Wedekind,  F.,  159. 
Wedmore,  Frederick,  quoted, 

129. 
"Well-made"  play,  37. 
Welsh  National  Theatre,  172. 
What  Every  Woman  Knows, 

Barrie,  234. 
Whelen,  Frederick,  158,  159, 

168. 
When     We     Dead     Awaken, 

Ibsen,  159. 
When  We  Were  Twenty-one, 

Esmond,  151. 
White  Pilgrim,  The,  Merivale, 

70. 
Whitewashing    Julia,    Jones, 

106. 
Wicked  World,  The,  Gilbert, 

54,  76,  79,  80. 
Widowers'  Houses,  Shaw,  157, 

188,  189. 
Widow  in  the  Bye  Street,  The, 

Masefield,  217. 
Widow  of  Wasdale  Head,  The, 

Pinero,  123. 
Wife    Without    a    Smile,    A, 

Pinero,  123. 


Wilde,  Oscar,  83,   134,   135, 

137,     138,     146-150,    218, 

230. 
Wilhelm    Meister's    Appren^ 

ticeship,  70. 
Wilkinson,  Norman,  236. 
WiUard,  E.  S.,  53. 
WiUs,  W.  G.,  7,  57,  68,  69, 

70,  101,  137. 
Wil  ton,  Marie.    See  Bancroft, 

Mrs.  Marie  Wilton. 
Windsor  Theatricals,  59. 
Wisdom    of   the    Wise,    The, 

Hobbes,  151. 
Woman  of  No  Importance,  A, 

Wilde,  148,  149. 
Wood,  Mrs.  John,  50,  52. 
World,     The,     Merritt     and 

Pettitt,  69. 
Wrinkles,  Byron,  69. 
Wyndham,   Charles,  52,  53, 

55, 112, 137. 
Wyndham,    Mr.    and    Mrs. 

R.  H.,  110. 
Wyndham's  Theatre,  137. 

Yeats,  W.  B.,  135,  169,  174, 

226. 
Yeomen  of  the  Guard,    The; 

or.  The  Merryman  and  his 

Maid,  Gilbert,  85. 
You  Never  Can  Tell,  Shaw, 

159,    165,    188,    194,    195, 

196. 
Younger      Generatioji,      The, 

Houghton,  170,  211. 
Youth,  37. 

Zetetical  Society,  The,  178. 
Zola,  E.,   41,   65,  136,   141, 
157. 


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